


When the Wolf Bites

by InTheArmsofaThief



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Laura Hale, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - No Hale Fire, Artist!Stiles, Canon-Typical Violence, Eichen | Echo House, Human Scott McCall, M/M, Magic!Stiles, Nogitsune, PTSD, Panic Attacks, Stiles Has Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-05
Updated: 2015-07-02
Packaged: 2018-03-21 07:50:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 16
Words: 34,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3684099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InTheArmsofaThief/pseuds/InTheArmsofaThief
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Are you a cop?" the man asked hesitantly. </p><p>“Uh, no.  I just work reception,” Stiles said, tugging nervously at his hoodie.  There was something about this man that made his anxiety start to build.  Normally Stiles was great at charming the people who walk into the station, even calming down the angry moms.  “We’ve been understaffed for years so I help out where I can.  You needed something?”</p><p>“I need to file a missing person’s report.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Stiles sat at the reception desk at the police station, idly sketching in his notepad.  They were short staff ever since some almost 90 year old WWII vet had sent a bomb to the station.  He was, very clearly, suffering from severe PTSD and had become delusional in his age, yelling about the Japanese internment camp that had been in the town ages ago.  A couple people died.  He and his best friend Scott had been there in the aftermath, Stiles running in to make sure his dad was okay.  It wasn’t a day he liked to think about.  But as for now, Stiles was happy to be a civilian helping out while he figured his life out after graduating college. 

He hadn’t noticed his pencil had stopped moving, that he had stopped sketching, hand still as he stared blankly at the spot in the corner where he had watched someone die. 

“Excuse me?”

Stiles startled, jumping in his seat.  His arms flailed and his pencil went flying.  “Ah, shit,” Stiles muttered, scrambling off his chair to get it.  It was a really nice pencil, okay.  Cost him like four bucks at the local art supply store.  Stiles popped up, triumphantly holding his pencil and grinned at the stranger waiting with a scowling expression.  Stiles quickly schooled his face to something a bit more professional and sat back down at the desk.  He cleared his throat.  “Sorry.  What can I help you with?”

The scowly man scrunched his heavy eyebrows, a confused frown tugging at the corners of his parted mouth.  Stiles had to say in a word he was breathtaking, but there was something about him that gave Stiles the chills.  “Are you a cop?” the man asked hesitantly.

“Uh, no.  I just work reception,” Stiles said, tugging nervously at his hoodie.  There was something about this man that made his anxiety start to build.  Normally Stiles was great at charming the people who walk into the station, even calming down the angry moms.  “We’ve been understaffed for years so I help out where I can.  You needed something?”

“I need to file a missing person’s report.”

Stiles’s eyes widened.  “Oh, jeeze.  Yeah, sure.  Follow me, I’ll bring you to the Sheriff.”  Stiles led Scowly to his dad’s office and knocked on the door.  His dad called for him to come in and Stiles opened the door.  “Uh, there’s a guy here who needs to file a missing persons,” he informed as professionally as possible and gestured for Scowly to enter.  His dad was quick to his feet, reaching a hand over to shake the stranger’s.  Stiles shut the door as the Sheriff introduced himself before getting down to business.

Stiles went back to the front desk and looked at his half-finished sketch.  It looked like he had a stroke in the middle of it.  Stiles sighed and flipped the page.  He needed to start something new.  He looked over to that spot where a deputy died again.  He needed something new.

It was over an hour later that Scowly left the station, his dad walking him to the door and giving the stoic man a firm grip on his shoulder.  As soon as the door was shut and a few seconds had passed, Stiles gave up the pretence of not watching the whole exchange.  “Who’s missing?”

“The kid’s sister.”

“Kid?  He’s looks almost 30.” 

The Sheriff laughed, although there was still something sad around his eyes.  “I knew his parents when he was younger, it’s not hard to picture him still twelve.”  The Sheriff sighed.  “I’ll put Parrish and Yukimura on it.  They’re good at these types of things.”

“So it’s,” Stiles raised his hands up to his face and wiggled his fingers at his father, “related?”

The Sheriff shrugged.  “No way to know yet, but considering the circumstances, best give it to the experts first.”  He ran a tired hand over his face.  “Give me twenty and let’s break for dinner?”

“Sounds good, dad.”

Stiles was off after dinner, a new transfer working the phones at night so that someone actually qualified could answer the phone when there were less cops around for Stiles to hand things off to.  His apartment was on 5th and Wells, which wasn’t the best part of town but it wasn’t terrible either.  It was affordable for a recent grad who didn’t want to move back in with his dad and there was enough space for his living room to mostly be his studio.  Stiles had gone to school for criminology but took his art credit freshman year and then ended up graduating with a degree in Fine Art.  His minor was still in criminology though, so Stiles was thinking of saving up for grad school to become a professional Angela from _Bones_.  But the longer he worked in the station the more he realized that might not be the best idea, if he wanted to stay in town. 

Two years working summers after the bombing and now a half year out of school, Stiles was coming to the timid conclusion that he wasn’t as healed mentally as he had thought.  Stiles had a lot of traumas in his life, and he didn’t want to leave his comfort zone: the medium sized town of Beacon Hills, his father, his best friend Scott who was the veterinary assistant in town, Scott’s mom Mellissa who was a nurse at the hospital, his friends at the precinct.  Stiles didn’t have a large social circle, true, but this was his home and this was his safety net. 

Stiles had a routine, of sorts.  On the days he worked, he woke up early, made lunch for the day before getting his hands covered in paint, painted until ten, went to work until dinner, ate at the diner with his dad, and then went home and painted until he fell asleep.  On the days he didn’t have work, Stiles did his laundry, went grocery shopping, visited Scott and his new girlfriend, Allison, did whatever other errands he needed to get done, drink starting from 5 in the afternoon, and then paint until he fell asleep.  It was a nice cycle.  He liked it.  He had enough time for everybody in his life.  And he got to look forward to a day without work tomorrow. 

So Stiles woke up, ate some cereal, did some touch ups, not allowing himself to get too wrapped up in the art as to forget the day, got dressed and left for the grocery store.  Where he ran into Mr. Scowly again.  Literally.  “Sorry, sorry!” Stiles flailed, pulling his basket back to try and not hit the guy who was today sporting a leather jacket.  “Oh!” Stiles said, when he noticed who he ran into.  “Hey.”

The man just jerked his chin up in recognition and walked by.  “Okay,” Stiles said to himself, checking the contents of his basket to remind himself what he still needed to pick up.  His heart was beating wildly in his chest and he wasn’t sure if it was because of the running into Scowly or if it was because the color of his eyes.  There was something startling about them, familiar.  Deep set and pale blue with a rim of hazel, sharp cheekbones and a sense of something dangerous. 

Stiles shivered.  He convinced himself it was just the refrigerator section. 

Later Stiles visited Scott, today at the animal clinic since they both didn’t have off, he pet some puppies to calm down and told Scott all about the stranger with the missing sister. 

“Sucks man,” Scott said.  “Hope she turns up soon.  But he sounds a little creepy.  Maybe it’s just a cover up, he says she’s missing to detract him from being a suspect.”

Stiles snorted.  “Okay, on one of my crazier days I would agree with you, but the way my dad comforted him on his way out the station says he’s on Scowly’s side.”

“Dude, how do you, master of the snoop, not know his name?” Scott asked, as he pulled out the cat food for the ones up for adoption and staying there. 

“I didn’t ask,” Stiles said with a bit of wonder.  He always asks.  And he didn’t bring it up once during dinner with his dad.  “I don’t know.  There’s just something about the guy.  I didn’t want to get to know him better.” 

“Even with his, and I quote, supernaturally good looks?” Scott scoffed, picking up an older cat that was trying to get at the kitten food. 

Stiles snorted.  “Yeah.  Man, this guy was hot, but…” he trailed off, eyes distant. 

Scott smartly put a cat in Stiles’s lap, which then hissed at the dog Stiles had been petting.  It was enough to wake Stiles up from whatever washy memory that was surfacing.  “Deaton’s been asking if you’ve been practicing,” Scott said, herding the dog back to his kennel. 

Stiles sighed and slouched in his stool, trying to keep the cat on his lap.  “Yes, I’ve been practicing.”

“When was the last time you spent more than five minutes working on anything?”  Scott asked, his eyes sharp like Melissa’s when she knew they were fibbing as kids.  Stiles’s shrug was answer enough.  “You know it’s not good for you if you keep all that magic bottled up, Stiles,” he scolded.  “And you know if I don’t bug you Deaton will drag you out to the woods again.”  Stiles stiffened at that.  He hated the woods.  “That’s what I thought,” Scott said, collecting the cat.

Stiles sighed and stood up to stretch.  “I’ll skip the drinking tonight, since you’re stuck here ‘til closing anyway.  And I’ll practice, okay?”  Scott nodded sagely as if he were Stiles’s elder or something.  Just because Scott worked for Deaton, the vet, who was also Stile’s shaman teacher didn’t mean that Scott had rank over him, even if he acted that way.   “Tell Allison I have Sunday off if she wants to go out Saturday night since your dumb butt is stuck working mornings this weekend.”

Scott laughed.  “Will do.  See you, Stiles.”

Stiles said his goodbyes and then headed out.  It was only four but it was getting dark, which was wrong for the time of year.  Stiles looked up.  Rain clouds.  He hoped to beat the storm home, then.   His apartment was on the other side of town.

Less than two minutes out and the clouds broke.  A deluge of water coated the window of his car, not even giving him the cursory droplets of a low speed window wiper.  He could barely see.  Stiles was thankful it was the middle of a weekday, less people were on the roads at this hour.  A beam of headlights caught his vision, coming right towards him like the other car didn’t know where the yellow line in the road was.  Fair enough, Stiles thought in a state of utter panic as he yanked his car to the side.  Stiles could barely see it either. 

Stiles screeched to a halt on the side of the road, trying to get his breath back to normal.  Panic clutched at his chest but he could hold it at bay.  He’d had enough panic attacks that he could sometimes pull them back early on.  There was a knock on the window.

“AAAAH!” Stiles yelled, twisting in his seat and smacking his elbow against the window.  He turned, wide eyed to see a man standing in the pouring rain, looking through the glass with a frown.  It was Mr. Scowly.  “Oh, Jesus fucking Christ,” Stiles muttered, his heart stuttering in his chest at the sight.  “I’m going to get myself killed.”  Then, without another second’s hesitation, opened his door just long enough to yell over the deafening sound of rain, “GET IN!”

The man nodded and rounded the car to slip into the passenger seat.  Stiles didn’t mourn the faux leather seating, it had been peeling for years.  The stranger was dripping and in a nicer car it could ruin the seats. 

“Sorry for scaring you,” the man said. 

“Nah, it’s cool,” Stiles said a bit breathlessly.  “Um, do you need a ride?”  He looked around for a car that maybe needed a jumpstart but didn’t see anything.  “Were you _walking_ in this?” 

The guy nodded, peeling off his leather jacket.  “Got caught while trying to…” he glanced at Stiles briefly before focusing on ringing out his shirt.  Obviously the guy didn’t have a problem making puddles in a random person’s car.  “Doesn’t matter.  You’re the kid from the Sheriff’s station?”

“I’m 23, but yes.  Stiles.  Nice to meet you, I guess.”

“Derek,” he said with an absent nod.  “Is it possible to give me a lift?  Sorry, I feel like I put you in a situation where you can’t say no.”

Stiles shook his head.  “It’s fine.  If I wanted to say no I never would have let you in my car.”

The guy – Derek – looked Stiles up and down, assessing him in a way that made Stiles feel a bit uncomfortable, but Stiles didn’t get the sense that _he_ was in danger, even though this Derek still felt like something dangerous. 

“Where do you live?” Stiles asked. 

“Down past Canyon, a little side road into the woods beyond the preserve.” 

Stiles’s heart stuttered.  He must have gone white because the man gave him a confused look. 

“You okay?” he asked.

Stiles nodded.  “Yeah, yeah.  Sorry.  I uh, it’s nothing.”

They drove in silence, Stiles extra attentive to the road with the rain coming down in sheets, especially once he had to turn onto a dirt and gravel path that made up Reed Lane, which was essentially a glorified driveway.  The house Derek lived in was huge, the kind that housed extended families, where people moved out but always moved back in.  It was probably in his family for generations by the style of it. 

Of course, it’s pulling up to this grand old house that Stiles’s car jerks, both of them slamming forward against their seatbelts as the front wheel hits a rock and then sinks and then spins and spins and the front of the car dips.  Stiles rested his head against the wheel, the purr of his engine sounding more like a whine.  “Aw, fuck.  Please don’t tell me I’m stuck.”

“Let me see if I can dig you out,” Derek offered, putting his jacket over his head and ducking out the car.

In the musty light of his headlights, Derek looks like a great beast, black and large, hunched over like an animal of all fours.  For a second the image of a wolf, too large to be natural, too vicious to be sane, black and stalking and that sound…

“Stiles!”

A hand on his shoulder startled Stiles.  He hadn’t even noticed slipping into a panic attack.  He could barely breathe.  Derek’s eyes looked over him, worried and flustered, but Stiles couldn’t speak enough to tell him it was alright, this happened all the time. Stiles locked eyes with him and the panic grew.  Blue eyes, so pale, so cold, flashing like something sinister.  Stiles had to close his eyes against the images, against the memories and Derek’s face. 

“Stiles, are you okay?  Stiles.”

Stiles nodded, keeping his eyes scrunched closed.  He gasped for breath, reaching out blindingly and finding Derek’s hand.  He hoped it wouldn’t be too intimate with someone he’s barely said more than two words to.  Stiles lead their hands to Derek’s chest, resting his own against the firm muscle above Derek’s heart.  It was a little fast but it was steady and Stiles breathed out a shaky breath. He breathed in time with Derek’s heartbeat 1-2-3 in, 1-2-3 out; quick enough Derek caught on, breathing in time with Stiles.  Eventually Stiles felt he was okay enough to open his eyes and take his hand away.

“Sorry,” he croaked.  “What an introduction, right?” he laughed a bit nervously.

Derek seemed to let out a deep breath of relief.  “Yeah.  You okay?”  Stiles nodded.  Derek grimaced a little.  “It doesn’t look like I can get your car out until the rain lets up or you can call a tow.  Either way, you’re welcome to come in while you wait.  I can get you some water.  Maybe lie down?  I don’t know if… whatever that was, has any side effects.”

“Panic attack,” Stiles supplied.  “And yeah,” he looked at Derek again, gauging if this was the type of stranger he followed into a house in the middle of the woods.  Then figured he already drove him here, what’s one more reckless decision.  “They can be kind of draining, sometimes.  A lie down might be nice.”  He swallowed thickly before gathering his things from the cup holders and following Derek through the pouring rain. 


	2. Chapter 2

The inside of Derek’s house had an ambiance perfect for a cozy night in during a thunderstorm. There weren’t too many lights on, but a lot of them were fairly dim. It was open spacing of a large living room that lead into the dining room with a bar that sectioned off the kitchen. To the right was a large door that was open, leading to a study and a set of stairs to the upper level, presumably bedrooms. Derek led him down the hallway between the stairs and the study that looked like it lead to the garage. There were a series of cabinets under the stairs and Derek opened one to pull out some fresh towels. He tossed one over to Stiles who had gotten decently soaked just in the short jot to the front porch.

“Who else lives here?” Stiles inquired. There were a good number of family photos littering the place, some fairly new, some dating back to yellowed black and white portraits.

“My two sisters and my cousin.”

“That’s it?” Stiles asked surprised.

“A lot moved away a number of years ago. It’s a long story. Do you want some clothes?” Derek was stripping his shirt completely. He tossed it through a door Stiles hadn’t noticed before. Laundry room, he could tell.

Then his eyes glued to Derek’s bare torso, still glistening with rain even as he tried to pat himself down. It was firm and sculpted, as if he spent all his free time at the gym. Stiles would have felt envious if he had the capacity to feel anything other than a flush of arousal. He shook his head, pulling his eyes away. “No, I’m fine. Shirt will dry quick enough.”

“Okay, well I’m going upstairs to change. Feel free to grab some water. There’s a pitcher in the fridge and cups are in the first cupboard next to the sink.”

Stiles followed his instructions, curiously opening a few other cabinets just because, and then pouring himself some water and judging the man based off the contents of his refrigerator. It seemed really well stocked, but he lived with 3 other people, so it was hard to tell what was exactly Derek’s.

Stiles was ambling around the living room, checking out the trinkets on display, careful not to trip over the mess of notebooks and magazines and shoes by one end of the couch, when Derek came back down stairs. He looked better in a warm sweater and loose jeans. He was barefoot though, which Stiles frowned at. He could catch a cold if he didn’t keep his feet warm. It was best if Derek took a hot shower, but it would be a little weird to shower with a stranger as a guest in your house.

“Where’s your house mates?” Stiles asked, awkwardly sitting on the couch.

Derek leaned against the kitchen bar, crossing his legs and arms in an effortless sort of way. “My cousin Malia is actually upstairs asleep. She works nights so she’s not waking up for another few hours. Cora’s a trainer at the gym so I never know her schedule.”

Stiles opened his mouth to ask where the last sister was before he remembered. Missing. Stiles looked away, trying to think of a new topic. Then his eyes caught the window. Even through the rain he could see the forest, thick trees of intertwining branches.

“You sure you’re okay?” Derek asked. “You keep flinching like a rabbit.”

Stiles tried not to blush from embarrassment. What grown ass adult was afraid of the woods. It was dark because of the rain but it wasn’t even night yet.

“Is it the storm?” he asked when Stiles kept quiet. “I know my friend Isaac jumps at the sound of thunder.”

“Close enough,” Stiles said with a tight smile. “So, Derek. Is there something to do while we wait for the rain?” He needed to get his mind off things. He was supposed to be meditating right now and being in the woods always made his magic jumpy. Although Deaton said that was a side effect of his anxiety rather than the woods itself.

Derek shrugged. “I can put on a movie. I wasn’t planning on being home so early so I don’t have anything else to do.”

“Kira and Jordan are going to find her, you know,” Stiles said suddenly, unsure why or how the words left his mouth before he even remembered thinking them. “Your sister. They’re good at their job.” He didn’t bring up the supernatural element to it, not sure if his dad picked up on the circumstances based off Derek’s report or because of Derek himself. He didn’t know if Derek knew that Kira and Jordan were supernatural themselves. It wasn’t his place to share, anyhow.

“Laura,” Derek said. “That’s her name.”

“They’ll find Laura.”

Derek sighed and pushed himself off the counter. “I hope so.” Derek headed into the kitchen and Stiles watched as Derek fixed up two mugs of tea. “This is better with the rain anyway,” he said when he handed Stiles a purple mug that had the name of a local bookstore scrawled across it in curly yellow font. _Beacon Readers_ was one of Stiles’s favorite places in town when he was in high school. “Thanks,” Stiles said with a small smile. Derek may not know what a panic attack looked like, but he was doing a good job at both giving Stiles space and keeping him feeling comfy and warm.

They ended up putting on _The Incredibles_ because who didn’t love animated super families and it was the right amount of engaging fluff that Stiles was able to lull into a sense of security. He snuck glances at Derek throughout the movie, who was sitting on the chair beside the couch, angled in to the coffee table. Derek had his arms crossed, which was a defensive gesture, but he seemed totally relaxed. Sometimes he would take out his phone, presumably replying to a text or two, scowling at whatever he read, or rolling his eyes. Stiles couldn’t quite fathom what kind of man this was. He was quick to give the cold shoulder. He was quiet and blank faced when talking at the station but seemed open enough now by his facial expressions, if not still very quiet. Then he also took care of a virtual stranger, bringing someone into his home… after getting in their car on the side of the road.

It was all very odd, was all Stiles could say on the matter. And he was beginning to feel curious, despite the gnawing feeling of wanting to stay away from the man. There was just something about him. Something that made Stiles want to divert his eyes and walk away and never run into him again; and something that made Stiles want to curl up beside him and talk to him about missing family members and the reason he’s afraid of the woods.

Stiles tried not to dwell on it.

Mrs. Incredible, Dash, and Violet were just reaching the island when the door to the house banged open with the shriek of a distraught female. “OH MY GOD! I _hate_ the rain. I thought California was supposed to be in a drought!”

Stiles nearly fell of the couch at the initial bang of the door, but was now situating himself as Derek rolled his eyes and got up. “Cora,” he called as she stomped her way through the house.

“Yeah, yeah. I got your texts. And that hunk of metal was hard to miss in our drive.” Cora raced up the stairs and then was back down in half a minute pulling on an oversized sweater. She was a petite thing, looked about two heads shorter than Derek, but even with the sweater on it was clear that she was strong. He could see her whopping some poor folks into shape. “Where is he?”

Cora spotted Stiles on the couch and grinned like the Cheshire Cat. Then she quirked her head to the side, scanning his face. “Oh, I know you. You’re the sheriff’s kid.”

Stiles nodded and got to his feet. “Uh, yeah. Stiles, hi.”

Cora took his hand, her grin falling to a wicked smirk. “Yeah, we were actually in the same class in third grade, but we moved away after that.”

“Oh, cool.”

“You don’t remember me at all, do you?”

Stiles shook his head. He had been infatuated with this girl Lydia back then. He didn’t remember much of anyone except her from that year. He hadn’t met Scott until middle school when all of the town’s elementary schools started going to the same building. Really he didn’t remember much before then. That was also around the time his mom died. He spent more time at the hospital than with other kids back then.

“That’s okay,” Cora said heading to the kitchen. “I only remember you because your dad. I had looked into going into law enforcement a few years ago and talked to him about it, there are lots of pictures of you in his office.”

Stiles blushed. This was true.

Cora didn’t seem like someone worried about her missing sister. Even Derek seemed rather laid back if not a little scowly around the face area. He wanted to ask, but he didn’t want to get into an argument when he was essentially stuck at their house.

“So, you work at the gym?” Stiles asked awkwardly. He hadn’t asked what Derek did.

“Yeah,” Cora said, pulling leftovers out of the fridge. “Malia’s a bartender at that dive bar down on Fredrick’s. And Derek, believe it or not, does other people’s taxes. Want any?” she asked, holding out the Tupperware of mash potatoes.

“No thanks.” Stiles looked over to Derek with a raised eyebrow.

Derek shrugged. “I’m good at math.” The idea of Derek as what Stiles would fondly call a poindexter was a jarring sort of hilarity.

“Right,” Stiles said, trying to hold back a grin. He looked out the front window where he could see his car stuck in the mud. There wasn't any sign of the rain letting up soon.

Derek went to turn the movie back on, Cora plopping down on the couch next to Stiles. “Ah, man, I love this movie. Can we start it over?”

“It’s more than halfway over, Cora,” Derek griped.

Just as the movie was ending, Cora looked up and smirked. “Malia’s up.” Not two seconds later there was a crash from upstairs and a girl’s voice shouting that someone left their shoes in the hallway. “THOSE ARE YOUR SHOES, MALIA!” Cora yelled. “She’s the messiest person I know and she’s convinced it’s the rest of us.”

There was a stampede down the stairs and Stiles turned to catch sight of a taller girl, skin lightly bronzed from lots of time in the sun. Stiles assumed she tanned at the salon if she was always working night shifts. “Ooh, who’s the cutie?” she asked when she spotted Stiles. Stiles tried not to blush, but from Cora’s snickering, he didn’t think he did so well.

“Stiles gave Derek a lift home when he got caught in the rain, but now Stiles’s car is stuck in our drive. Can you bring him home on your way to work?” Cora looked over to Stiles. “Just, it doesn’t look like the rain’s going to let up to get your car unstuck any time soon. We can get it to you tomorrow.”

The way Malia stalked over to him made Stiles feel like prey. She leaned over the couch between Cora and Stiles. “Yeah, I can do that. I have to go in early anyway to stock the new shipment of booze.”

Not long after Stiles was saying thank you and goodbye to Derek and Cora, making arrangements to get his car dropped off at the police station tomorrow and following Malia into the garage where an array of nice cars were parked. Stiles let out a low whistle. “Wow.”

Malia smirked, tossing her long sunstreaked brown hair over her shoulder like some kind of model. “Yeah, we like nice cars. Unlucky enough to be able to afford them,” she said a bit sadly. “Hop in.” Malia nodded to the silver Aston Martin.

“Sure it won’t get stuck in the mud, too?” Stiles looked over to the Mercedes that looked like it went through an action movie sequence with the amount of mud splattered over it.

Malia laughed. “Good point. Get in the SUV.”

“Why are you working as a bartender if you have this kind of money?” Stiles asked.

Malia shrugged and got into the car. “I like it. I don’t always understand people but I do know how to give drunks their drinks. They like me more when they’re a little out of it.”

“You don’t seem too bad,” Stiles admitted.

“That’s just ‘cause I called you cute. Other people’s first impressions of me are a punch to the jaw or a rude comment. I have a hard time holding my temper.”

They chatted all the way to Stiles’s little apartment. Malia was an interesting character. She didn’t drink, but liked watching people be drunk. She actually got off the bar after clean up around three and then went to the 24 hour diner on Main St. for lunch and then the coffee shop next door she worked another job making the cookies and muffins before opening. Then she would run errands, have some fun, and go to sleep until work in the night. “I mean, sure I don’t _have_ to work, but I go stir crazy at home and I’m better with odd hours and less people. Or drunk people. Drunk people aren’t like real people at all,” Malia had said.

When he finally got into his own apartment, Stiles stripped of his wet clothes and took a hot shower, needing to warm up and calm down. He wasn’t exactly freaking out just then, but there was this underlying tingle crawling just beneath his skin that he hadn’t been able to shake since picking up Derek on the side of the road. He figured Scott was right and he’d probably gone too long without using up some of his energy.

Once dressed again in a pair of pajama pants and a paint stained band tee, Stiles pulled out the spell book Deaton had passed on to him and got down to business. Something simple, he told himself.

X

“It’s just not right,” Stiles told his dad, sitting sideways in one of the chairs in the Sheriff’s office. “All of them seemed perfectly fine. Not a one seemed stressed or worried that they were missing a sister. How can they act so nonchalant about a _missing persons_?”

“Stiles,” his dad sighed for what seemed like for the hundredth time that morning. “This is not a case I want you nosing around. Okay? Trust me, their strange behavior is not something you need to worry yourself over and not something I need to be looking into. I promise you.”

Stiles grumbled but let it go, only because it was lunch time and he had left his sandwich under the front desk. When Stiles got out there, Derek was leaning over the desk, giving a blinding grin to Tara, who was manning the phone while Stiles took his lunch hour. She seemed to be looking flattered and giving a sly, flirtatious grin in return. His teeth were white and flat but something about the curve of his lips reminded Stiles of a set of sharp canines.

Derek looked up and his smile shifted, Stiles wasn’t quite sure how. It was a completely different look than he had been giving Tara. “Hey. I brought your car.” Derek tossed him his keys which Stiles caught with some fumbling hands, mostly a success of trapping them against his stomach.

“Thanks. Do you have a ride home?” Stiles asked.

“I’m fine,” he said. Derek gave him a wave and a nod to Tara goodbye and left.

His dad hadn’t wanted Stiles looking into this case. And Derek kept reminding him of an incident he’d rather forget. He could see the strings, but he didn’t want to look too closely at them. There was a good reason his dad wanted him to stay away. But Stiles was never good a leaving an itch alone.


	3. Chapter 3

Deaton was standing outside his door when Stiles got home that afternoon.

“Ah, no, come on,” Stiles complained as he made his way to the door. “I practiced yesterday, I swear!”

Deaton held out his hand, palm up, and gave Stiles a pointed look. “Your hand, Mr. Stilinski.”

Stiles rolled his eyes and put his hand in Deaton’s. He knew the man was reading his energy. That familiar rush like the world dropped out beneath him just for a moment as somebody else’s power flowed through his veins, just checking, nothing harmful. His body knew Deaton’s energy well enough at this point it was never an issue anymore. When Stiles had started training under Deaton his powers used to go awry and fight back any time Deaton tried to help him. It was a strenuous process.

“You couldn’t have spent more than thirty minutes putting together a weak protection charm yesterday. If you don’t really work your powers soon, it could have health risks, or worse they could break away from you and hurt someone else.”

“Why is hurting someone else worse than hurting myself?” Stiles snarked, yanking his hand away and jamming his door key into the lock. “Look, I’m sorry I’m not the prodigal apprentice you wanted. There’s nothing else in your stupid book I even want to attempt trying, okay.”

Because Stiles had seen the effects of bad magic. Like it was some twisted field trip he got to help take down a Darach. And with Stiles’s tendencies he didn’t want to risk getting fixated on learning more and more and more until _he_ was the one out of control, and not his powers. He’d managed to evade Deaton’s insistence on the matter for close to nine years now. He could keep up being a weak old green witch with nothing more than a spark to his name. He didn’t want to be a shaman, he didn’t care what Deaton said about his powers.

“This isn’t okay, Stiles. Your powers have been manifesting more and more since you stopped gaining height and your brain still has another two more years to fully mature. You need to channel yourself better and you’re not going to be able to do that if you don’t bother to learn. We’re going today. No arguments.”

Stiles ignored this and argued all the way through dropping his stuff off and grabbing his spell book and following Deaton out to the vet’s Subaru. They rode in begrudging silence, the only sound the stray remark Stiles made in complaint. The roads were dry now, puddles only sticking to the edges of sidewalks as they trickled their way through a mess of fallen leaves to the drainage system. The ground was still soaked through, though, soggy to step in once they reach the preserve. It didn’t fix the drought in one rainfall, but it was enough to get by for now.

“This is gross,” Stiles said as he trudged through the slippery forest floor, his converse getting mucked to hell.

“It’s your own fault we’re out here, Mr. Stilinski.” Deaton liked to use a title when he was acting smug and superior. It was one of his more annoying habits. “You need to drain the built up energy and there’s only one way to do that quickly without harming yourself.”

They found their way to a clearing that held a giant tree stump. It was large enough to fit three grown bodies lying side by side. Maybe four. Deaton called it the nemeton, which is a fancy word for a natural place of concentrated magic. The world was full of magical currents, and nemetons were where they intersected. Deaton had been bringing Stiles out here since he was fifteen, teaching him how to first control his power, then later share it back into the earth when Stiles had seen too much and no longer wanted it.

“I hate the woods,” Stiles cursed, jumping at every stray sound of branches and leaves crunching. Squirrels, he thought. It was always squirrels. There was nothing to really be afraid of. He had a hard time convincing himself of that.

Stiles climbed onto the nemeton with Deaton, both sitting cross legged and closing their eyes. At least for right now it would just be meditation. Deaton wouldn’t suggest doing a spell until he was sure the excess energy spilling off Stiles was stripped, leaving him in better control to work.

Deep breaths, Stiles reminded himself. Meditation felt an awful lot like the way he trained himself to breathe to come down from a panic attack, but since he was starting from a neutral state his heart became slow and his breath so light you would almost think him dead. When his power poured into the beaming source of Beacon Hill’s supernatural activity, Stiles got swept away. He became the tree, the roots digging for miles under the earth, the once tall trunk with a canopy that he could see the whole town from the top of. He became the forest, each twig and leaf and bug and bird. He became the howl at the moon.

Stiles gasped awake, an after image stinging behind his eyelids. Suddenly he couldn’t so easily avoid the strings connecting things in his mind. “ _Fuck_ ,” he muttered. Deaton gave him a strange look, something akin to worry on the stoic man’s face. “I can’t keep – I have to call my dad. I’ll come back to you in a minute.” Stiles dug out his phone and went to the tree line, ignoring the jitters in his stomach as he strayed from the clearing.

“Hey, Stiles, what’s up?” his dad answered cheerfully enough.

“Derek. And his family. What’s their last name?”

There was a heavy sigh on the other end of the line. “Stiles –”

“No. Dad. You can’t keep things from me like I’m still a little kid. What’s their last name?”

“I was hoping you wouldn’t find out, or at least not until after this whole mess was figured out.”

“So, what, poor little Stiles wouldn’t freak out? _Well I’m already freaking out, Dad!_ ”

“They’re good people, son!” His dad scolded him, keeping him from going off in a tailspin. “The Hales are good people.”

Stiles hung up at the confirmation and headed back to Deaton. It made sense, why Derek kept triggering memories. He looked so much like Peter.

Afterimages were still haunting him, little snippets that weren’t quite visuals, like just the memory of the wind that night filled his nose brining scents that weren’t real, as if he could feel the way his body reacted in screaming terror even though he was still calm from meditation. It was like something twisted inside, a heavy cord of phantom tension snaking through his limbs.  

Then something completely unrelated washed over him, a new terror to his senses, a new image to his mind, a new wolf howling. Stiles stumbled forward and braced his fall against the giant tree stump. He tried to close his eyes – open his eyes – but the vision remained just as clear as if it were the real world before him.

“Stiles!” he heard Deaton call for him. “Stiles what are you doing? You’ve got to come back.”

Deaton placed a hand on Stiles’s shoulder and the vision was gone and he was once again standing in the middle of the woods.

Stiles shivered. “I hate this place.”

Deaton frowned. “Whatever you just did, I think it’s enough magic for the day. Let’s head back.”

Stiles shook his head. “Bring me to the station. I have to tell them what I saw.”

Deaton looked him up and down as if searching for a change in Stiles he had missed. “And what did you see?”

X

“An Aztec temple?” Parrish asked with a raised eyebrow. His dad stood behind them leaning slightly against the wall with a mixed sort of pain on his face and Kira seemed oddly intrigued and on board with everything Stiles was saying.

“I don’t know. It could have been Mayan or straight up Mexican, I’m not an archeologist,” Stiles groused. “But I know it had that style of art and it was old and run down and it felt like the desert but there was old roots and Laura was there. I know it was her.”

“Stiles thinks, and I agree, that this place could be another nemeton,” Deaton added.

“And why,” his father asked, waving an arbitrary hand in front of his face, “did Stiles see this other nemeton? How do we know it really was a…” his dad squinted in his _what is my life_ face “vision?”

“It’s hard to be certain,” Deaton hedged, “but it is possible that since Stiles is refusing to let his powers grow outwardly they may be manifesting inwardly.”

Stiles could tell by the look on his dad’s face that the Sheriff was wondering _why now, why the Hales_. Stiles wondered the same. “Okay, well this has been lovely. I’m going to go home. I’m taking tomorrow off. I need some time.” He was itching for his paints. He didn’t want to involve himself more than he already had, and he knew that look on Kira’s face spelled trouble.

“If we find out more about this temple,” Kira started, “we might need you to help us look into it.”

“Nope. No. I am not a cop. I am not qualified to help. I want nothing more to do with the Hales.”

He was halfway out the door, willing to walk home if Deaton wasn’t following, when Parrish called out. “Stiles, you’re the only lead we have on this case so far.”

He turned around, spreading his arms in a parting gesture. “And I gave you all I have.” Deaton just looked at him sadly. Looks like he was walking home.

He hadn’t gotten far when a shiny black Camaro slowed down beside him. He half recognized it from the Hale’s garage before the window rolled down to show Derek sporting his leather jacket and a pair of shiny aviators and a sharp grin. “Need a lift?”

“No,” he said tersely. He didn’t want to look at Derek. Didn’t want any more reminders of who they were, what they were. Stiles just kept walking down the sidewalk.

“It’s the least I can do,” Derek said rolling slowly down the street.

“You brought my car to me just earlier today. You don’t owe me anything.”

“You're right,” Derek said with a bit of snark. “That was hard work. Maybe you owe _me_ something now. You can make it up to me by letting me give you a ride.”

“How can you act like that?” Stiles snapped, making the mistake of looking towards the other man.  

“Like what?” Derek balked.

Stiles stopped walking in his frustration, Derek dutifully breaking in time with him. “Like your sister isn’t missing? There’s something going on here and you act like the report you filed was just part of your daily routine or something.”

Derek sighed and pushed his sunglasses on top his head. “Laura… disappears a lot. Malia’s convinced she’s just in Vegas. She normally checks in by now if she’s just parading around, but there have been times she doesn’t. If she were hurt or dead I… I think I’d know it.”

“Pack bond?” Stiles scoffed, turning from Derek and walking away.

There was a sound of the engine cutting and a lightly slamming door. Derek caught up to him in two seconds. “How’d you –”

“Is that even a legal parking spot? I would get back in your car if I were you.”

“Stiles,” he intoned with a bit of force.

“ _Derek_ ,” Stiles spat back. “Just leave me alone. I don’t want anything to do with shifters. They tend to be two faced.”

“Oh, and what are you going to do, call in the hunters,” Derek snapped, but Stiles could hear some real fear in his voice.

“You haven’t attacked any humans, have you?” He looked back to look in Derek’s eyes. There was a murderous glare to his eye. But again, despite the feeling that Derek was dangerous, Stiles didn’t feel like he was in any danger. This man was a predator, but he wasn’t a killer. “I don’t go around hurting innocent people, even if I’m not their biggest fans.”

Stiles stalked off, hoping that this time Derek would just let him go. There was a few yards of silence and then Stiles listened as Derek got back into his car. He sped off the other direction.

When Stiles finally made it home, he chugged a beer and pulled out a new canvas. By the time he couldn’t keep his eyes open anymore there was a pair of glowing blue eyes coming off the page at him. Black fur and sharp teeth and despite the snarl of its muzzle, it looked for all the world like it was begging for Stiles save it. From what, he couldn’t guess.

Stiles sighed, half ready to throw the painting across the room and set it on fire. Instead, he just washed up, turned off the lights, and fell into bed. He was tired enough that no stray thoughts haunted him as he tried to fall asleep. He wasn’t even sure if he dreamed.


	4. Chapter 4

Stiles was covered in paint, eyes half glazed over from his focus as he got into the little details of the woman’s face on the canvas. His stomach was growling at him but he hadn’t noticed until the room started to grow dark and it was getter harder to see by. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast and it was already 7:30. He finally gave into the will of his hunger and put down his paint brush. He wasn’t sure what he was doing, painting his vision, but it was the only thing he seemed capable of doing. Every sketch, every stroke, it lead him back to her.

He sighed and opened the fridge to find that despite his recent grocery shopping, there was nothing in there he wanted to eat. Typical. Most days he ate at the diner anyway for dinner. He wasn’t prepared for an extra day off of work. Stiles quickly talked himself into walking down the street to the pizza joint that was open ‘til 10 and grabbing a bite.

He had placed his order at sat at one of the plastic, hard seated booths to wait when someone slid into seat across him. Stiles looked up and groaned. “What do you _want_?”

“You paint?” Derek asked, reaching over the table to grab at Stiles’s hand. The fingers only lightly touched his wrist when Stiles yanked back hard, slamming his elbow against the seat backing and yelped. “Whoa, sorry. Okay, no touching.”

Stiles’s heart was beating like a hammer and now he knew that Derek could hear it if he bothered to listen in. “Why are you bothering me?” Stiles spat, rubbing at his sore elbow. This was twice now he’d knocked it hard because Derek had caused him to flail.

Derek just looked him over with a smooth expression that was somehow both warm and distant. Stiles couldn’t read it for the life of him. “I was talking to Deputy Yukimura about the case. She said that you brought their attention to something that indicated Laura might actually be in trouble and not just willfully missing.”

Stiles crossed his arms high over his chest. He knew it was a defensive stance, but Stiles wanted to keep his hands away from Derek and if he didn’t dig his nails into his arms they’d be swinging wildly as he talked. “It was nothing. I’m not even sure what I- We don’t even know if the information I had… received was real or not.”

“Look,” Derek said, leaning back best he could in the stiff booth, “Laura and I got into a fight the day she left. Then when I didn’t hear from her in a few days, I filed a report because I knew if she just skipped town someone would spot her and phone in so I could at least _know_ what she was up to. Then I tried to track her best I could on an old trail, but then I got caught in the rain and any scent of her is gone. I just want to know that my sister is okay.”

Stiles stayed silent, biting the inside of his cheek to manage it. He wanted to explode, to lay down a tirade that kept him away, but he also wanted his pizza and not to make a scene and… and he wanted Derek to have his sister back. If any of his family were missing he’d go to all ends to find out everything he could.

When Stiles didn’t say anything, Derek laid his arms on the table between the, reaching out without actually reaching out. “If my sister is actually in danger and you have answers,” Derek said seriously, his face sharper with an anger just boiling behind his eyes, “I want to know what it is.”

Stiles sighed and uncrossed his arms. “Just,” he chewed his bottom lip and looked around, “wait until I get some food in me, okay?”

After Stiles’s order was up, he took the box and shoved a burning slice into his mouth, making Derek hold the pizza as they headed out the parlor. Stiles lead him to his apartment, not kidding himself that Derek probably already knew where Stiles lived. He took the box from Derek just before entering, half afraid Derek might drop his precious pizza. Judging by the look on Derek’s face, it was a real possibility.

“That’s Laura,” Derek said in shocked awe, staring at the half finished painting Stiles had been working on all day.

“I can’t stop seeing it,” Stiles said. “Every few minutes it’s just there, this glimpse of something like a memory.”

On the canvas, Laura was asleep. Her arms were crossed like a mummy’s, tendrils of plants and roots wrapping around her body.

“What’s this?” Derek asked, his finger hovering over one of the carvings in the stone around her.

“Hell if I know,” Stiles admitted.

“There’s a triskelion in the corner,” he said with alarm.

“A what?” Stiles asked through a mouthful of pizza.

“It’s a werewolf thing, the three spirals here. This particular design isn’t the one my family uses, but it’s related.” Derek looked back at him, uncertainty in his eyes. “You _saw_ this?”

Stiles shrugged. “I guess. Deaton’s been trying to train me but I’d rather distance myself from the supernatural as much as I can.” Stiles could see that Derek wanted to ask why, but thankfully he stayed quiet on the matter.

“If this is real, that means she’s asleep and there’s no distress for me to be picking up on. She really could be in danger and I wouldn’t be able to tell…” It seemed like a foreign concept to Derek. Stiles didn’t point out that that was how most people dealt with their loved ones missing. “If we can figure out the source of these symbols we might be able to find her.”

Stiles sighed. “Take a picture and bring it to the station then, if you think it will help. Fuck, take the whole damn thing. I don’t want it.”

There was a fake shutter sound and Derek tapped away at his phone. “There, sent it to Parrish.”

“Great, you can go now.”

Derek growled, a real growl of a werewolf and suddenly it wasn’t so easy to pretend. Stiles’s heart stuttered as Derek pulled out a chair and sat across from where Stiles had settled at the table. “Okay. I don’t know what your problem is, but I’m getting really fucking sick of your attitude towards me. You didn’t seem to have a problem when you helped me at the station or when you gave me a ride or when you stayed in my house for a few hours. So what the fuck should it matter that I’m different.”

“Peter. Hale.” Stiles bit out, his stomach rolling. He pushed the pizza box away, its aroma suddenly nauseating.

“My uncle?” Derek asked, sitting up rigidly with a puzzled expression.

Stiles stood up and shucked off his top layer of plaid and reached over his head to yank his shirt off. He stood there with a bare torso, all his scars on display. There was a wolf bite on his right side, puckered skin that was even now a little pinker than the rest of his body. A set of claw marks raked across his abdomen, trailing south beneath his jeans. Another set left deep welts on his left shoulder where Peter had tried to hold him down, keep him in place.

“Oh my god,” Derek whispered.

“My dad says you’re good people, but you let one of your own slip through the cracks. He killed at least five other people before attacking me. I was fourteen.”

“He was exiled,” Derek said, his eyes blank in thought, “kicked out of the family. I had no idea he…”   

“I think I always knew, looking at you,” Stiles said, his voice a bit hollow now. “You have his eyes.”

Derek’s eyes flashed, a bright electric blue. _Both of them_ , thought Stiles. “I’m sorry Peter did this to you,” Derek said. “I guess it makes sense, why you wouldn’t want to…”

“I killed him,” Stiles admitted, the words shooting out of him like a long overdue confession. “It was the summer before starting high school and I was dicking about in the woods and I was attacked and I didn’t know about my powers and I… it killed him. Whatever I did.” There were tears pricking at the corner of his eyes. “It took a while. When he attacked me he was in a full shift but then he found me a few days later, black bile dripping from his nose and he tried to kill me again and I was still in the hospital and I… I still don’t know what I did.”

Heavy silence sat with them for a while, as if no one could talk, no one could move, time stopping until it chose to move on and the air lifted. Derek’s eyes were glued to his bare chest, roaming the scars left there by his kin. And Stiles looked at him and for the first time wasn’t reminded of something dangerous.   

“If he weren’t dead I’d kill him again,” Derek finally voiced. Stiles pulled his shirt back over his head, tugging it down as if subconsciously trying to cover his stomach more. He tried to ignore the shiver down his spine at Derek’s words. “Peter tried to kill my mom. He very nearly succeeded.” Stiles frowned and sat down. It was as much of a _go on_ that Derek was going to get. “There was this neighboring pack, back when we lived in Beacon Hills. Their alpha had lost his sight in a fight against hunters and most of his pack. He was challenged and he won, killing one of his betas. Then he killed all of his betas.”

This was why Stiles didn’t associate with werewolves. Most creatures with a society were barbaric. Werewolves, witch covens, court fey. Stiles couldn’t stand anyone who used their power as an excuse for violence, that used violence as a means of power.  

“The alpha, Deucalion, he then convinced some other pack leaders to follow him. Two other alphas killed their pack, and he got this pair of twins to kill their alpha and pack, elevating their status. He wanted to make a super pack. An alpha pack.

“My mother refused to be a part of it. Deucalion convinced Peter to kill his sister, take over as alpha. Peter had always wanted the power. It didn’t take long to twist him to Deucalion’s ways. Peter tried to kill his own sister and we kicked him out of the pack and we got together with some other packs and were able to take the alpha’s down. I was just a teenager at the time, but even I was fighting. My dad died… and my grandparents. Some of the other packs’ members. Peter disappeared. We figured, as an omega, Peter would either reform or hunters would get him.”

Stiles wanted to say that was stupid, but his tongue was tied by the emotion in Derek’s voice. Stiles wasn’t the only one to see hell at a young age. Besides, it wasn’t Derek’s choice. He was too young then. Still young now, comparably to most wolf packs.

“Where’s the rest of your family?” Stiles asked eventually.

“My dad’s side of the family moved in with a pack down south. The rest of us went to New York. My mom retired a couple years ago. She was injured pretty badly in that fight with the alphas and had been struggling for a long time. She gave the power over to Laura but… Laura never really wanted it. None of us did, after we saw what it could do to you. But we thought, maybe moving back to our own land would help. So, we’ve been here for two years now. Laura leaves sometimes to get herself under control. She doesn’t like being around us when she’s angry.”

“So that’s why you weren’t worried when she left,” Stiles said. Derek had said as much earlier, but this made more sense. Stiles picked at the paint stuck rimming his nails. He was going to regret this, he just knew it. “If you tell Deaton he might have some books on symbols for you to look through. And if you bring him something of Laura’s he can try a tracking spell.”

“Can’t you do it?” Derek asked, curious but with an open look of thanks on his face.

“I don’t like magic,” Stiles said darkly, but the bite wasn’t as harsh as it would have been just twenty minutes ago.

“You don’t like anything, do you?” Derek scoffed.

Stiles held back a smile. “I like painting. And video games.”

Derek shook his head, a wry grin pulling at his lips. “Thank you. I’ll see you around, Stiles.”

“Yeah.”

Derek stood and gave Stiles one last look over as if he could still see the marks hidden under his shirt. “For what it’s worth,” Derek said, keeping his eyes on Stiles even as he made his way to the door, “they make you look kind of badass.”

Stiles blushed and bit the inside of his cheek, looking away. “For what it’s worth, I don’t care what you think.”

“I heard the lie,” Derek called with a parting smirk before shutting the door.

“Fucking asshole,” Stiles muttered, but there wasn’t any heat behind the words.

X

Stiles went out with Allison that night, telling her all about his recent troubles. She and Scott hadn’t been dating long, but she clicked with them both like they had known her all their lives. Allison was actually from a hunter family and could exercise her skills at any moment, but she had the strongest moral code out of anyone Stiles knew. Even Stiles thinks he would snap and kill some of the assholes Allison’s dealt with. “I can’t shoot someone full of arrows just because they’re a dick,” Allison would laugh anytime Stiles brought it up. Stiles appreciated the way Allison ran things. As the current matriarch of the Argent hunters (which was a wide network of people across the country), Allison had been shaping their ways to be about protecting those who couldn’t protect themselves, and often times that meant actually helping supernatural creatures when they were being attacked (by other supernatural creatures or hunters who wanted to kill everyone).

“I didn’t realize you had such an aversion to weres,” Allison said, sipping her beer. “Coming from my family, I get it. I’ve seen some really nasty rogues, but by and large they’re just average people.”

“It’s been nine years, Allison, and I’m still not over that attack. Like, maybe if it was a member of Satomi’s pack two towns over, I could get over it and be their friend. But, like, they’re the _Hales_. They all have this same stature, almost. It’s just eerie. I haven’t had so many flashes about Peter since meeting them.”

Allison clinked her bottle to his and smiled. “Maybe it’s time. Maybe you should finally _deal_ with it. From how Scott talks about it, you’ve just bottled things up until something triggers you. It’s not healthy. You should have seen me after my mom died, I almost went crazy. It took a long time to get better, but… I had to face it at some point. Realize the wolf that killed her wasn’t every wolf and that some of them even need my help.”

Stiles gave her a sad smile. “Yeah, Deaton’s been bothering me to see his sister. She’s this shrink for people who are in the know. I’ve… I’ve seen her a few times and,” he sighed. “I’m just not good at opening up, I guess.”

“Well, you can always open up to me,” Allison said, leaning over to kiss Stiles on the cheek. “And Scott, although he doesn’t quite get this world sometimes. And, it sounds like, maybe even Derek.”

Stiles sputtered, nearly choking on his beer. “What’s _that_ mean? I’ve talked to Derek all of twice!”

“And you’ve already told him about your biggest trauma,” pointed out with a raised eyebrow. “I knew you for months before you started letting me in and I still don’t know all your secrets.”

“That’s different,” Stiles said shifting uncomfortably in his seat. “His uncle was the… it related to him.”

Allison shook her head. “Let me tell you something about yourself. You’re really good about talking except about anything that’s important. If you bring up something that matters, I think you trust him more than you may realize. Also,” she gave a self-satisfied smirk, “you haven’t shut up about him since you got here.” Allison covered her laugh with a smug swig of beer. Stiles groaned. She was never going to shut up about this.


	5. Chapter 5

It’s a week later that Stiles was working at the station when a click of tall heels in the lobby floor signaled someone’s arrival and Stiles looked up from his sketch to spot a strawberry-blonde goddess. 

“Lydia?”

The woman startled and looked around, her eyes landing on Stiles.  “Stiles?” She blinked a few times, seemingly coming to realize where she was.  “Oh, shit.”

“Still doing… that, I see,” Stiles commented, scratching at the side of his mouth with his pencil. 

She sighed, looking over to the same spot Stiles often found himself staring.  “I can still feel them.  It’s been two years and I can still feel them.”  She sounded so resigned.   Lydia walked over to the counter and rapped her knuckles against the faux-wood finish.  “I’m in town visiting my mom for _one day_ and I end up in front of you with no memory of how I got here.”

“Sounds like old times,” Stiles said a bit sadly.  “I’m off soon.  Wanna grab a bite?”

Lydia gave a wry smile.  “Might as well.  I have a feeling if we don’t talk I’ll just end up back here.”

They ended up just stopping for a coffee at the beanery a few doors over. 

“So, Angel of High Heavens, how’s Boston?”  Stiles asked after they put in their order.

“Busy.  MIT offered me a position but I’m considering NASA.” 

Stiles laughed.  “Only you, Lydia.  Only you.” 

Lydia made a little “hmf” sound as she collected her latte.  “You could have too if you bothered to do something with your life.  You were salutatorian and I know you got into CalTech and Stanford and you _could_ have applied to MIT with me but you didn’t want to leave the state.”

Stiles rolled his eyes but couldn’t deny it.  He was smart, maybe not as smart as Lydia but smart enough that following her could have gotten him some of the same opportunities.  “I’m an artist, Lyds.  You can’t trap me with numbers.”

She laughed.  Stiles grabbed his coffee and they left for Lydia’s rental car.  She refused on principle to get into his run down Jeep. 

“Why do you think you showed up near me?”   Stiles asked as they headed to his apartment. 

Lydia shrugged, putting on her sunglasses.  “You know me, finding dead bodies, showing up at places people died, hearing random sounds and thinking I’m going crazy.”

“So, either it was the bombing or I’m going to die soon.”  Stiles said with a sip of his coffee. 

“Probably.  Why are we going to your apartment again?”

“It was your idea to, and I quote, see how the other half lived,” Stiles said, rolling his eyes.  Lydia liked to overplay their financial situations. 

“Well, damn,” she said, pulling onto his street.  “It must be like that time I brought Kira to a gas station when my tank was full.”

“Oh, gross, and you found that dead hooker in the bathroom?”  Stiles said.  “Please don’t let there be a dead hooker in my apartment.”

“Ugh, I hope not,” Lydia said finding a parking spot.  “I have been lucky enough not to find _any_ dead bodies in Boston.  I meandered into a succubus den once to scream which actually _stopped_  them from breaking into a fight and killing each other. That's been the worst of it, luckily."

“Such a hassle to be you.”  Stiles led Lydia to his apartment and watched her take the place in. 

“Not terrible,” she said, finding a clean surface to drop her coat.  “Who’s the subject?”  Lydia nodded to the painting of Laura that was still half finished sitting on his easel. 

“A missing werewolf.”

Lydia looked at him curiously.  “Since when did you deal with werewolves?  I remember you freshman year, Stiles.  You couldn’t stand to be around _Prada_ when she barked because you were so nervous around dogs.”

Stiles blushed.  That was kind of embarrassing.  “Aw, Lyds, you paid attention to me way back then?” he asked to cover it up.

Lydia rolled her eyes.  “Had to keep my eye on the talk of the town.  Famous survivor of the rampaging ‘cougar’, boy who used to be seriously head over heels for me doesn’t show up to my birthday party; a girl notices these things.”  As she talked, Lydia walked closer to the painting of Laura, her eyes scanning the image like it was one of her complex math problems.  “She’s aging backwards,” Lydia said a little breathlessly.

“What?” Stiles asked, rushing over.  “Lydia.”

Her hand was reaching out behind her.  He grabbed it and suddenly _heard_.  He heard the paint and the notes in the strokes.  Stiles’s magic sparked with hers, and it was so clear, so suddenly clear.  The temple, the markings, Laura.

Lydia and Stiles broke apart with a shuddering gasp of air. 

They stared at each other with wide eyes.  “Jesus, Stiles.  _This_ is why I don’t come to Beacon Hills.”  She stomped over to her coat and shrugged it on with a huff.  “Tezcatlipoca,” she spat.  “Damn Aztec gods and their stupid temples.  She’s in a stupid temple in Mexico, and yes I know where.  You know I studied mythologies like a madman after discovering my whole… Banshe-ism.”

“Did the great Lydia Martin just make up a word?” Stiles laughed, still trying to get his breath back.  He was reeling from the visions. 

“This isn’t funny, Stiles,” Lydia snapped.  “You know how much I hate these stupid… powers.”

Stiles was seventeen when he faced down the Darach with Deaton.  It was around the same time that Lydia started hearing voices.  It wasn’t until the Darach tried to kill her that she discovered she was a banshee.  Since then Lydia had spent time trying to figure her powers out, but there aren’t many resources about banshees.  Lydia hates not having control, still popping up random places, screaming when the sounds become too strong.  Stiles gets it.  He hates his own powers too.

“It was good seeing you, Lydia,” he said. 

She looked him over, pulling her coat’s belt tight around her waist.  Her hands paused, then smoothed the bottom of her coat.  “You know I’ve come to think of you as a good friend, Stiles,” she told him sincerely.  Lydia walked over and put a delicate hand to his shoulder.  “I miss you, you know.  But I can’t help you with this.”  She glanced to his canvas. 

“You already did.”

Stiles gave her a light hug.  She yelped a bit in surprise, but let him, even hugging him as well.  “Maybe in a year from now I’ll help you solve another mystery.” 

“Have a good time with your mom.  NASA and MIT are both lucky to have you.”

After Lydia left, Stiles dutifully alerted Kira and Jordan about the temple and Lydia’s instructions on how to find it.  Not a day later there came a knock at his door.  

Stiles opened the door, whipping his hands on his rag towel.  Derek stood there, his nose wrinkling at the paint fumes.  Stiles was using oils that day. 

Derek leaned against the door frame.  “You got your passport?”

Stiles shook his head, scrunching his brow.  “I’ve never been out of California, let alone the country.  Never got one… Why?” he asked cautiously.

“Come on, let’s get you one.  We’re going to Mexico.”

“ _We_?” Stiles scoffed, firmly planting his hand on his hip. 

“I need your help, Stiles,” he said so simply Stiles could already feel himself caving.  “If Laura’s out of the country, it’s way out of Parrish and Yukimura’s authority.  And I don’t want to try and get international governments involved in a supernatural kidnapping.” 

Stiles thought it over, his mind stuck on the idea of going so far from home.  “I don’t…” Stiles said, his chest constricting painfully, “I don’t like to leave.  I’m not good at…”

Derek’s face fell.  “When’s the last time you even left town?”

Stiles shrugged, walking back to his painting.  Derek stepped inside and shut the door.  “My undergrad was in Dershire,” he offered. 

“Stiles that’s only forty minutes away.  It could take that or longer to drive from one end of LA to another,” Derek sounded like this was something scandalous.  “I mean, I know Beacon Hills isn’t the biggest place, but it’s no small town trap.”

Stiles shrugged, picking up a paint brush.  “I’m not good with change.  I...” Stiles dabbed the brush into the small puddle of burnt umber that was still on his pallet.  “It’s easier for me to cope with things if I know what to expect from places.  I don’t go into the woods.  I don’t go further than Freemont.  I always shop at the same six stores in town and if I need anything I can’t find I order it online.” 

“And what does that accomplish?” 

Stiles gripped at his brush a little too tightly and his hand cramped.  “It accomplishes the limitation of surprises?”

Derek scoffed.  “Life doesn’t work that way.” 

“Derek, please don’t try to show me the logic of the situation,” Stiles snapped, angrily dotting at his canvas.  “I know, they don’t make sense, but that’s not how this works, okay.  I have ADHD, telling me study strategies isn’t going to get me to focus.  I have anxiety issues, telling me my fears are irrational isn’t going to make me forget them.” 

“What about working at the station?” Derek asked.  “Parrish told me about the bombing.  You seem to work fine there.”

Stiles put his paintbrush down and turned to face Derek.  The werewolf was leaning calmly against the bookshelf, staring him down unblinkingly.  Stiles looked him square in the eye, something like electricity sparking between them.  “I was in the middle of a flashback when you first met me.  I see the deputies that died there all the time.”

Derek pushed himself off the bookshelf and stalked forward.  Stiles felt his heart in his throat.  “Then why don’t you leave?  You could live anywhere and be an artist.”  Derek’s eyes went to the canvas behind him.  “You’re really good.”

“My dad’s here,” Stiles protested.  “And my friends.  I’m not just… I’m not just leaving them.” 

Derek sighed.  “I’m not asking you to leave your family,” Derek said.  “I’m just asking you to help me find mine.”

X

“This is a terrible picture of me,” Stiles frowned. 

“It’s not that bad,” Derek said, yanking the passport out of Stiles’s fingers.  “I kind of like it.  Accents your moles.”

Stiles groaned, snatching the passport back.  “Whatever, I have this stupid passport.  We can go to stupid Mexico.  You happy now?” 

“Let’s just get Laura, okay?”  Derek bumped shoulders with him and Stiles nearly lost his balance. 


	6. Chapter 6

Stiles was waiting by his car outside of Derek’s house, the ground now packed hard again.  He was wondering if his Jeep could make it out to Mexico and back but the Hales all seemed kind of possessive over driving, so he doubted he would have to.  He had stepped outside when Cora and Derek started yelling about who exactly was coming to Mexico.  The answer, that Stiles had mixed feelings about, was most likely going to be all of them. 

He heard from the road the sound of a motorbike pulling up and Stiles wondered if it was Malia, but Stiles had thought she was inside sleeping.  When the bike round the bend he recognized it as Scott’s, but the rider was clearly a girl.  She came to a stop in front of Stiles and cut the engine, kicking the bike into park.  Stiles knew it was Allison before she even took her helmet off. 

“What are you doing here?” Stiles asked.  “And why did you steal Scott’s bike?”

“It’s faster and I didn’t want you leaving without me.”

“Without _you_?” Stiles scoffed.  “Why is everyone going on this trip?”

Allison gave him a look that he was becoming more and more acquainted with being called a dumbass.  She swept her hair out of her face and Stiles would have sworn she had a makeup artist on hand because she looked much too put together for someone who just raced over here. 

“Scott just told me where you’re off to.  That town is in Calavera territory.  If you’re bringing werewolves there, you’ll need me.”  Allison put the helmet on the bike seat and opened the storage unit on the right side of the back wheel.  Inside was a small duffle she dropped on the floor and the replaced with the helmet.  “Besides,” she said, going over to the other side’s storage unit, “if things turns to shit, even they should know you don’t bring claws to a gun fight.”  Allison pulled out her crossbow, and a silver case that Stiles suspected had guns in it. 

“Aw, come on, Ally.  No weapons.”

“This is a rescue mission, Stiles.  Yes weapons.  Used by only me, the only person qualified and licensed to use them.”   Allison rolled her eyes and picked up her bag.  “I’m going with you.” 

The front door to the Hale house opened and Derek, Cora, and Malia came storming out, still bickering.  It was kind of a warming sight, if Stiles was being honest.  They stormed over, only stopping short in confusion when they noticed Allison. 

“What is she doing here?” Cora growled. 

Stiles stood in front of Allison a little defensively.  He didn’t fool himself for a second Allison couldn't defend herself, but Stiles still felt the need to cover her.  Stand up for a friend, and all that.  “Allison made a good point,” Stiles said, staring down the werewolves.  “She can help us handle the local hunters, okay.”

“She’s an Argent,” Cora snapped.  “Those good for nothing hunters go around harassing families across the country.”

“Correction,” Allison said, stepping around Stiles.  “I am _the_ Argent, and ever since I came into position as the head of the clan six years ago, I’ve been systematically eliminating any member who disrespects our new set of rules.  If there are any hunters still harassing werewolves in the country, they aren’t Argents.”

“And that’s supposed to impress us?” Malia scoffed. 

“This is going to be a fun ride,” Stiles said.  Sties opened his car and pulled his bag out.  “Are we taking the SUV?  I think that’ll have the most room.” 

“Isaac’s going to be mad he doesn’t know about this,” Cora said, turning on her heel and heading toward the open garage.  “Imagine how he’ll react that a hunter came with us.”

“He’s away at college,” Derek said, giving Allison the evil eye before turning to follow Cora, “I wasn’t going to pull him out of class for this.”

“This is a _legit crisis_ ,” Cora yelled.  “This is something the whole pack should be on.”

Malia crossed her arms and gave Allison a look over before joining her cousins.  “I’m just sad Kira couldn’t make it.  She’s kinda cute.  Would have made a fun road trip.”

“Malia, _no_ ,” Cora said, looking like she wanted to pull her hair out.

Stiles looked over to Allison and shrugged.  “I guess that’s as much of a welcome as you’re going to get.”

Allison shrugged.  “I’ve had worse.  I had to deal with hostile packs when I was only eighteen.  If I could gain their trust and respect _then_ with no years behind my belt leading, I can do it now.” 

A half an hour later they were finally all piled into the car, Stiles in the back with Allison, Cora taking a middle row seat.  Malia had strong armed the others into letting her drive.  Derek sat crossly in the passenger seat, fighting Malia over what was playing on the radio. 

The further and further they drove away from Beacon Hills the more nervous Stiles became.  Cora kept giving him odd looks over her shoulder and eventually Allison rested a hand on his jittering leg.  “Just snap Scott,” she offered.  “He’ll distract you with videos of the animals at the clinic.”

He mouthed his thanks and pulled out his phone.  It kept him distracted for a while, long enough to reach their first rest stop. 

“This really freaks you out, huh?” Derek asked as they picked up snacks at the gas station.  Both Cora and Allison had thought to pack some beforehand but there wasn’t enough for all plus werewolf metabolisms. 

Stiles shrugged.  “Like I told you before, I like control and routine.  It’s never gotten so messed up since meeting you.”

“Sorry to inconvenience you,” Derek said with a smirk, reaching over Stiles’s shoulder to grab a bag of chips.  Stiles’s breath hitched, getting a whiff of Derek.  “But I’m glad you’re here.”

Stiles was left in the chip aisle as Derek turned around to pay for his haul.  “Fucking asshole,” he muttered.  Stiles heard Malia laugh two rows over. 

Back in the car they did a rotation, Derek taking over driving and Cora in the passenger seat.  Malia kept poking Stiles, snapping jokes with sharp smiles.  He wasn’t sure if was purposefully to distract him or just annoy him, but it actually made the trip a bit easier. 

They switched again after dinner, Malia taking over the wheel (“because this one’s _my_ car, that’s why, fuck you”) and Cora refusing to give up her passenger seat.  Stiles somehow found himself in the middle with Derek, Allison taking a nap in the way back.  It was getting dark and they would all need to sleep by the time they passed the border. 

“What’s your plan once we get there?” Stiles asked.  They had speculated before, but they never made a real plan. 

“Find Laura, get her, get out,” Derek said with a shrug. 

In the front both Cora and Malia rolled their eyes. 

“I love you bro,” Cora said, slapping Derek's knee by awkwardly reaching behind her seat, “but you have zero skill for strategy.”

Derek huffed and shifted in his seat.  “It’s not like we know what we’re up against yet.” 

“Still,” Cora yawned.  “Remember in high school when you managed to make Captain of the basketball team?”

“And then was three weeks later made co-captain so you could still pull rank in practice,” Malia added, “but what’s his name, Winkler, made all the game calls.”

Stiles held back a grin.  “Well that’s embarrassing for you,” he told Derek, nudging their feet together. 

“Don’t look so smug,” Derek said, nudging his foot back. 

Stiles shrugged.  “I was never very good at sports.  I was on the lacrosse team, and you know, I liked it, but I only tried out in the first place because my buddy Scott didn’t want to do it himself.  And I have ADHD, so sports have always been good for me to focus my energy.  I did track, too, but man, I hate running.”  He laughed.  Derek grinned with him.  Cora was giving him a fond look through the rearview mirror, but swiftly diverted her attention. 

“We run a lot,” Derek said.

“Yeah, well you’re kind of hard wired to,” Stiles offered.  “Wolves are high speed sprinters and long distance joggers.  If that makes up half of your DNA, it makes sense you would enjoy moving a bit faster than the average human.”

“Are you just, like, a dictionary?” Malia asked. 

“Encyclopedia," Stiles corrected, "and I spend a lot time online, binge reading. Again, ADHD.  Sometimes I focus _too_ much.”

Derek nudged his foot again.  Stiles squinted at him for a second, trying to process the other man’s behavior.  Despite the situation, despite the missing sister and the impending sense of doom, this felt like a normal road trip. 

It was nearing midnight when they crossed the border and finally stopped off at a place to rest.  They got two rooms, one for the girls and one for the boys.  Stiles worried a little bit about leaving Allison alone with them, but quickly shook the thought away.  They seemed to treat her lightly, for now.  And Allison, Stiles reminded himself, is stronger than she looks. 

“Window or door,” Stiles asked, dropping his duffel between the two beds.

Derek looked between the two sides of the room.  “Door,” he decided. 

Stiles dropped onto the window bed and splayed his arms.  “There’s always something about hotel mattresses.  They always feel more comfortable than your regular bed.”

“They smell disgusting,” Derek said, unbuckling his belt.  “Even if they haven’t been used for sex anytime recently, rooms smell like too many other people and a light overlay of clean sheets.”

“I can understand why you would have an aversion to them, then,” Stiles grinned. 

Stiles sat up and tugged off his shoes as Derek stripped off his pants.  He took the opportunity to take in those toned legs.  Hairy and bulging with muscle.  Stiles had a brief thought of how strong Derek was, enough to hold him up and – nope.  Not going there, he told himself.  Especially not with a super sniffing werewolf in the room.

“I always pack my own pillow,” Derek said.  “Bring a smell of home.”

“Me too!” Stiles said, grinning.  “I can’t sleep without my pillow.”   He pulled his duffle over and pulled out the pillow that yes, he had somehow managed to get paint stains on.  “Granted, I don’t leave home often, but when I do I found out that I _cannot_ fall asleep without my own pillow.” Stiles pushed the hotel ones aside and put his own on the bed.

Stiles caught Derek breathe in deeply.  Stiles wondered how he smelled to Derek. 

“We’ll find her,” Stiles promised, when the silence in the room became awkward as they settled into their beds.  “Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow.”


	7. Chapter 7

Stiles woke up in the middle of the night, a dream of monsters and strange places waking him up. There was no moonlight tonight. Stiles went outside, shivering against the desert night air. He didn’t like it. He didn’t like the strangeness of the scenery or the dry coolness and odd residual heat of the desert. He didn’t like the way his limbs shook knowing his dad was so far away, that he was in a different country, that he didn’t even really speak the native language of the land he was in. He didn’t like the worry that came with miles of distance between his home and his paints. But he liked the way he didn’t see any ghosts over his shoulder.

Stiles sat down on the plot of “garden” surrounding the hotel, plucking at the stray strands of reed like plants. He should know what it was, but he never studied the books Deaton gave him as much as he should have. Stiles new a lot of trivia about the plants he did know, but he hadn’t memorized the lot yet. With a deep breath Stiles slipped into something like meditation and began braiding the plants. He focused a bit more than he had the last time he tried a charm, his mind on Derek and the girls.

He kept picking strands of plants and weaving them together until his eyes were tired. He had four bracelets sitting on his leg. Protection.

X

“You left last night,” Derek commented as they got ready in the morning.

Stiles yawned and nodded his head. “I couldn’t sleep. Made some charms. Not sure how well they’ll hold up, but they might be helpful.” Stiles dug through his pack where the bracelets had made their way to the bottom of his clothes. “Here, this one’s yours.”

Stiles handed over a tightly woven band of plants, raised knots in the braiding making a pattern like a constellation of stars. He was sure if he looked to the night sky he could find it’s match, but Stiles didn’t know which one or why. His magic liked patterns and symbols, borrowing from nature in ways Stiles hadn’t learned yet, despite the books he’s been reading.

“Thanks,” Derek said, looking Stiles over with a sly speculation. “What’s it do?”

Stiles shrugged. “Protection, it felt like. I’m not the best,” he shrugged. “I never wanted to learn, which is kind of ridiculous,” Stiles said with a huff of choked off laughter, “considering how much I absorb information and dive into research binges like I need it to breathe.” Stiles scratched at the back of his head abashedly. “Kind of wish I could do more to help now, though.”

“You’re doing plenty,” Derek assured him. He slipped the bracelet on and they headed out to meet the others.

Cora had already handled the checkout for their rooms, she, Allison, and Malia waiting by the car. It was a little disconcerting to see them acting already as thick as thieves. Stiles idly wondered what Allison did last night to get on their good side, but he guessed it didn’t matter. He handed out the other bracelets he made. Agility for Allison, Strength for Malia, Luck for Cora. All different patterns of woven plant and raised knots in the weaving. He didn’t really explain what they were for, just asking the girls to wear them until they fell off. With his magic, the fragile blades of grass and straw wouldn’t fray until the charm was depleted.  

“So what’s the plan?” Stiles asked as they all climbed into the SUV, Allison and Stiles in the middle, Cora stretching out in the back.

After a twenty minute drive they were deep in a city where Allison and Stiles were dropped off to get directions. As helpful as Lydia was finding the temple, the specifics were still hazy and they needed local’s advice.

“Why here?” Stiles asked Allison as they slipped into a local café.

“Trust me,” Allison said with a wry look.

The place was surprisingly empty for this time of morning. A few very American families sat and ate breakfast and a couple of men sat in the back, watching everything. Something about them gave Stiles the shivers. It was the same feeling Stiles got when he first met Allison’s family.

They went to the front counter, Allison ordering a coffee and Stiles an ice tea since the caffeine in coffee makes him jittery. “Anything else?” the man at the register asked in thick accented English.

“I was wondering if you could give us direction to La Iglesia?” she asked innocently.

The man’s eyes narrowed. He looked them over with heavy suspicion while giving her the total. Allison handed over some notes. “La Iglesia isn’t really a tourist destination,” the man said as he counted their change.

“Well, we’re not really tourists,” Allison said, her voice dropping lower. Allison reached to her neck and pulled at the chain hidden by the collar of her shirt. She pulled it free to reveal the silver arrowhead charm with the Argent insignia on it.

The man glanced at it and nodded. “Jefa!” he called to the back.

There was some more yelling in Spanish between the man and a woman in the back. Stiles caught the words _Argent_ and _la loba_ and _desierto_ which Stiles was able to translate from his years in high school Spanish. There were a few moments of silence between the two voices, Stiles and Allison eyeing each other. He suspected Allison knew Spanish much better than he did. Stiles glanced over to the men in the back, who watched them with hawk eyes. He gulped and diverted his eyes. The back door creaked open.

An older woman appeared. She had a stern face and beady eyes. “Senorita Argent,” she said with pursed drawl. “What can I give the pleasure?”

“Senora Calavera,” Allison greeted with a slight nod. “La Iglesia. We’re trying to find someone and we have information that they’re being kept there.”

“Kept?” the older woman said with a frown. Calavera looked over Stiles briefly with a frown before giving her full attention back to Allison. “We have been tracking a she-wolf that we believe has been holing up there, but La Iglesia is sacred ground. We do not wish to trespass unless pushed.”

“She-wolf?” Allison questioned.

Calavera crossed her arms. “It is a name we give her, but she is not really a wolf.”

The tension in Allison’s shoulders dropped. It took Stiles a second to put it together, but it meant that the “she-wolf” they were tracking wasn’t Laura, meaning she wasn’t in danger… at least from the local hunters.

“Well Tezcatlipoca was known for big cat shifters. Pumas, Jaguars,” Stiles offered. The hunters all looked at him with suspicion. Stiles shrugged, keeping his head down. Lydia had sent him some of her recourses and he had been binge reading since.

“No, mozuelo,” she said with a click of her tongue. “She is not from these parts. She does not belong to the Aztecs. She is a desert scavenger.”

“We’ll keep an eye out,” Allison promised. “But we need to find who we’re here for.”

The woman looked them over again and nodded. “We will give you directions and respect your hunt if you respect ours."

“Of course,” Allison said.

Twenty minutes later, Stiles and Allison made it back to the car with a map to the temple and the known tunnels of La Iglesia. Allison had already finished her coffee and the ice in Stiles’s tea had melted. He was starting to feel queasy anyway. There was a sort of heaviness of the heart when heading into danger. It always made Stiles feel ill when he knew a battle was on the horizon.

Allison and Stiles relayed the information that there was another shifter in the area and that they should be careful. The wolves all tensed, not liking the prospect that possibly another pack took their alpha. Somehow that was worse than just a strange creature or hunter.

The trip to the temple was longer than they expected, all parties tearing through their snacks and lunches by the time they reached it. There was something dark and ominous about the barren ruins of a long forgotten temple, even with the midday sun lighting up even the deepest shadows.

Stiles was a bit surprised there was no complaining when he jumped out of the car to join them. He doesn’t know if he would have taken the command to stay back or followed anyway, and that alone surprised Stiles. For once, in all his adventures, he felt personally invested, not just professionally required.

As they walked to the ruins, Derek kept giving him worrying glances. “What?” Stiles asked, eventually, hunching his shoulders a bit.

Derek looked between Stiles and the temple. “Just that… do you think you’ll be… okay?”

Stiles somehow knew that Derek was referring to his panic attacks. They were walking into a cave of triggers. He shrugged. “I guess we’ll find out.”

The group of them stood at the main entrance of what was once a grand doorway.

“Can you find her scent?” Stiles asked.

“No,” Derek growled in frustration. “But there’s something else. It smells familiar but I can’t place it.”

“Must be the other shifter,” Allison grumbled.

They made their way through a maze of fallen stone and overgrown vine. Everything smelled of death. Stiles wondered how the wolves were handling it with their heightened senses.  Soon enough they made their way to a crossroads. Three paths, five people. “So, do we split up, or..?” All of the TV Stiles had ever consumed told him that was a bad idea, but with nothing else to go on and an impossible amount of land to search, it seemed like the only option.

“I’m going with Stiles,” Cora declared.   She frowned after she said it, as if she wasn’t sure what prompted her. _Luck_ , Stiles thought idly. If Cora’s instincts were to go with him, he wouldn’t argue.

“You three that way,” Stiles said, pointing to the far right corridor. “We’ll take the left. Leave the center for if we don’t find anything.”

Derek made a step as if to follow Stiles, but Stiles shook his head. Not now, not this time.

Derek stepped back and turned to Malia and Allison, who already had her crossbow at the ready. “Howl if you find anything,” Derek told Cora, his eyes dancing over to Stiles.

“Copy that,” Cora grinned. “Come on.” Cora grabbed Stiles’s wrist and dragged him down the left passage. “You know,” she said after slicing through a hanging vine with her claws like some twisted jungle explorer, “I think my brother has a crush on you.”

Stiles tripped over a vine. He would have face planted on the hard ground had Cora not had her wolfy reflexes. She just laughed at him. Stiles groaned in embarrassment.

“I can see it, though. Like, you’re the type of guy he’d normally go for, when he goes for guys, but there’s just something else about you. I think Derek sees you as someone… I don’t know. Someone who can understand him. Better than maybe even other wolves might.”

“Uh, thanks? I guess,” Stiles mumbled, scratching the back of his head.

“This is the part where you tell me how great you think he is,” Cora prompted with a wicked grin, pushing Stiles’s shoulder maybe a little harder than planned.

Stiles fell backwards, his heel catching on another root and slamming back into the wall of the alcove they had stumbled into. Some of the stone crumbled under the force of his weight.

Cora gasped and sniffed the air, her eyes widening as she tried to catch a sudden waft of scent. Stiles turned to face the wall he had hit. It was covered in a familiar pattern. It was the symbols from his paintings, the ones that were behind Laura. But maybe, in reality, she was behind them. There was a little hole made from the crumbling stone, enough to catch her scent, if Cora’s reaction was anything to go by, but there must be a way in. Stiles was about to suggest the go around the bend to look for a secret passage when Cora pushed him aside and punched the wall.

“Or that works too,” he muttered.

Cora let out a roar, punching the wall again and again, some parts giving way easily while others were so thick and dense she had to punch a few times and reach into the growing hole and pull.

An answer howl echoed through the temple. It was Derek, Stiles was sure. But then there was another one. It came from a whole other direction. Derek and Malia wouldn’t have split up, surely. Frantically, Stiles looked to Cora to see her eyes wide with worry as she continued to knock down what would have been a relic.

“In, _in_ ,” Cora hissed, pushing Stiles’s shoulder until he took the hint and crawled into the space cleared. There was something coming, he realized.

Cora followed him, spinning on her heel to guard her little entrance when the strange howl sounded again, closer.   Then Derek and Malia’s, also gaining. The room they had found was small and dark, a thrum of energy pulsing from every surface. Laura was here, but he just couldn’t _see_.

Stiles closed his eyes and concentrated, there was enough magic in this place to pull from that he didn’t have to try too hard. A glow covered his hands, iridescent light that he could see by. The walls inside the little cove were _covered_ in the same insignia’s as the outside. In front of him, the back of the hidden room, was the clear sign of recently placed brick. This must have been where Laura was brought in.

He heard shouting and scrambling as Allison, Malia, and Derek reached the spot Cora and Stiles were hiding. Stiles turned, his light reaching out to the far end of the little room. It was her. The face that had been flickering behind his eyelids, the image he drew a hundred times, the painting he spent so much time on.

“Laura,” he whispered, stepping forward.

There was a flood of light as Cora stepped out of the hole in the wall. There was eerie stillness outside, silence. The sound of heavy breathing.

Stiles dared to look out. Malia stood at the head, claws out and face shifted. Derek and Cora flanked her, eyes shining but human still. Allison had her crossbow ready. They all faced a lone figure, tall and slender, clothes a bit torn and covered with the dirt of this place.

“Mother,” Malia growled.

“Long time no see, kid.” The woman’s eyes flashed a glaring red.

Then, in a flash, they were going after each other, a mess of teeth and claws. It was three against one, four if you counted Allison, but she couldn’t get a clear hit with all the other bodies. Still, they were at a disadvantage to the alpha.

Stiles backed away, turning to run towards Laura and clear the twisted foliage that was growing around her. Laura’s unconscious body fell forward when the roots and vines no longer held her down. She blinked up wearily, as if stripping her from the wall broke her from the spell woven there. She lashed out, not knowing who he was, but she was weak and unable to do much more than flap her arm.

“It’s okay,” he promised. “We’re here to help. I’m with Derek and Cora and Malia… we’re-”

Stiles had made his way to the hole in the wall in time to see Derek shift, a full wolf shift. His bones bent and _snapped_ and Derek howled as his teeth protruded from his mouth. It was a sight akin to the monster that once came after him, that still haunted Stiles’s dreams. Then Derek’s morph settled and there was just a wolf and Stiles wasn’t afraid of _that_ per say, but the image was sticking with him. Half a second of flashback and Stiles was dropping Laura to the ground, his breath catching. He could already feel tears streaming down his face, hyperventilating like Peter had only just attacked him, like he was still in the woods with a monster, like he was a kid in the hospital, magic so scared he _killed_ someone.

Stiles couldn’t breathe, he could barely _see_. A wail tore from his throat that he couldn’t help, his body taking over. The black wolf’s head turned at the sound, just long enough for the woman to lash out at his unprotected flank. An arrow whizzed by. A cry of anguish. The arrow went clear through the woman’s hand. Derek turned back to the fray, his snout turning into a snarl. He lunged forward, biting at the woman’s heels. Cora, who had been knocked backwards, barreled at her knees while Malia tackled the woman’s front. Together, they took her down, pinning her to the ground.

Stiles tried to pull himself in, stop his heart from beating out of his chest and force his lungs to hold air longer than a punctured balloon. He was sure his face was pink and splotchy, tear tracks he couldn’t get rid of as he wiped his face. The commotion was rearing down even as the alpha thrashed against the three betas. But it wasn’t them that scared him. It wasn’t the situation he was in. It was his memories that dragged him back to a time when he was still weak, too young, in the dark about the world around him. It was his mind that scared him, and the worst part was you can’t run away from your own mind.  

“Derek?” Laura asked, her voice sounding small from the ground as she looked in wonder at the black wolf. Laura took in the mess of people, her eyes landing on the woman on the floor and back to her brother. “Where the fuck am I?” Laura's eyes flashed gold, and then she fainted.


	8. Chapter 8

Stiles sat in the car, still wiping stray tears from his cheek. He could breathe normally again but it felt like something heavy in his chest. He hadn’t had a panic attack like that in a while and the after affects were stronger than normal, he thought. Or maybe he just wasn’t used to them.

Laura was sprawled out in the back, asleep. She hadn’t woken up since fainting in the temple. Allison had helped Stiles and Laura back to the car while the wolves decided what to do with… Malia’s mother? He was still unsure as to who the strange alpha was, but it was clear there was history there. The way the woman thrashed on the floor, her threats and bargaining to take them in, it all sounded… personal. Up until the point Allison knocked her out with a wolfs bane tranquilizer.

Eventually Derek returned, human and clothed, climbing into the back to hold Laura’s head in his lap. Derek frowned at his sister. “She looks younger.” He traced the lack of wrinkles by her eye. She and Derek looked the same age now, but Stiles knew Laura was a few years older.

“When did Laura become an alpha?”

“Little over two years ago,” Derek supplied.

“There was,” Stiles said, taking a moment to take a deep breath. Words caught in his throat for no other reason than he was still crying a bit. “There was magic holding her down. The symbols on the wall…” he had taken out his small sketch pad since getting into the car and quickly copied some of them down. Between what he remembered from his studies and what Lydia had said when looking at his painting, it wasn’t too hard to put together, as impossible as it may seem. “I think she might literally have been de-aged. Not just… made younger, but reversed.”

“By… a little more than two years?” Derek guessed.

Stiles nodded. “Was, uh, was Malia’s…” he flinched. It was hard to come to terms with the fact that Malia was the byproduct of two psychopaths in love.

“Malia’s mother is a bit notorious, often goes by the code name Desert Wolf.”

“Someone in your family _would_ have a code name,” Stiles scoffed, trying to lighten the conversation for no other reason than his tangled nerves.

“She’s not really _my_ family. Malia’s mother was distant at best,” Derek explained. “She jumps into Malia’s life sporadically but never more than a day or two. I don’t think they’ve seen each other in years and even then… she’s kind of a criminal, and not just by werewolf standards. Malia was raised more by my mom than Peter, especially after Peter, well…”

“Your family is all kinds of messed up,” Stiles laughed a bit hysterically. He was a little thankful it was just him and his dad. It made things… simple. Controllable. Stiles needed control. Stiles shook his head and got back to the topic he was trying to breach. “Was Malia’s mother already an alpha?”

Derek shrugged, brushing the matted hair off of Laura’s face. “She could have gotten it at any time in the last… I don’t know how many years. Why?”

Stiles chewed on his bottom lip. “It’s just that… if Laura was reversed to the age she _gained_ alpha status, it’s reasonable to assume that power had to go somewhere. Right?”

Derek’s face hardened, thinking this new information through. “A wolf can only give over status to someone who is their blood or bitten. Or a wolf kills for status.”

“But Laura isn’t related to Malia’s mother?” Stiles prompted. Derek shook his head. “So, maybe she found a way to take it without killing her niece?”

Derek huffed. “Well she’s still better than Peter, I guess,” he said bitterly.

“What are you going to do with her?”

“It’s Malia’s decision,” Derek said. “Her mom may be wanted in more than one country, but she’s still her mom.”

An hour later a team of black vans reached them. Stiles watched from the tinted window as Allison spoke with the Calavera’s matriarch. Malia stood by her side, face stern. Stiles wondered what they were discussing, but he didn’t want to get out of the car. Derek had gotten out to discuss everything over with his sister and cousin, new information tipping the scales on their decision.

Cora opened the driver’s side door and climbed in. “Allison and Malia are going to fly back, stay with the hunters to make sure the bitch is taken care of after Malia takes the alpha power back. That is assuming her mom willfully gives it over.”

“Where’s Derek?” Stiles asked.

Cora smirked at him. “Trying to convince Malia not to kill her mom if it comes to it. I mean, I guess we’re alphaless now, which isn’t ideal, but we can manage.” Cora looked past Stiles sadly, her eyes roaming over her sleeping sister.

“How come the local hunters said she wasn’t a werewolf?” Stiles asked, finally voicing his confusion on that matter.

“Hmm?” Cora scrunched her forehead. “Oh. Because Malia and her mom are coyotes.”

“How exotic,” Stiles said.

Cora laughed and then rolled down her window to yell at Derek. Eventually the man came over and they got ready to take off.   

They drove straight through to Beacon Hills, Cora only stopping to pick up some cold brew coffee, a pack of 5 hour energies, and a couple of litters of mountain dew. “It’s funny,” she said, “our bodies metabolize alcohol too quickly for it to affect us, but coffee slow enough that if we drink enough of it we can still get wired.”

Meanwhile Derek sat with him in the middle, presumably to be closer to Laura when she woke up. Still, they chatted a bit, dumb conversation to keep their minds off events. Sports, TV, favorite superheros. It all sort of blended together. They kept nudging their feet together. Stiles nodded off at some point only to wake up to find his right leg stretched out and tucked under Derek’s. There was a comfort in the heat and slight weight of Derek’s leg. Stiles turned to look at Derek with sleepy eyes. Derek smiled back, bone weary.

As they got closer to town, Stiles called Deaton and ask him to meet them at the Hale house. The vet was waiting in the drive by the time they pulled up. It was easy enough for Derek to carry Laura inside and lay her on the couch for Deaton to examine.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” he admitted. It was worrying to hear, to say the least. As far as Stiles’s narrow scope of the world was concerned, Deaton had seen everything. “It could wear off in a day or two, or she could be like this always. Luckily it was only a few years. People have lost more memory from purely human accidents.”

“Luckily,” Cora scoffed, rolling her eyes. Derek just had his brow furrowed thickly. “You’re lucky I don’t rip your throat out.”

“Cora,” Derek said with a bite of warning.

On the couch, Laura groaned. Derek and Cora immediately rushed to her side, pushing Deaton out of the way. “Cora?” she asked, blinking in confusion, her eyes not quite focusing. “Derek?” She sat up, claws breaking out and ripping into the couch seats. “You were a wolf. A real… since when did you full shift?”

“About a year ago,” he said, flicking Laura’s forehead. “You just… you just don’t remember.”

“What?” she sounded scared, maybe a little heartbroken. She searched Derek’s face with wide eyes, then looked over to Cora. “You look older.

“No, Laura,” Derek said, “you look younger.”

Stiles looked between them and started backing out, giving a nod to Deaton. This wasn’t something he needed to be intruding on. He made it all the way to his Jeep outside before Derek caught up to him.

“Hey, hey, wait.”

Stiles turned and waited by his door. “Yeah?”

Derek shrugged awkwardly. “I just… thank you. For helping. I know this whole thing was hard for you.” Derek sort of shuffled his feet on the dirt, glancing up at Stiles from long lashes.

“Yeah,” Stiles said, chewing his bottom lip a bit. “You’re uh, welcome.”

After a few beats of silence, Stiles opened the door to his car when Derek shot his hand out. “Uh, can I…” They stared at each other for a heartbeat, two, three. “Can I make it up to you? I mean. Take you out sometime?”

Stiles blinked, his jaw a little slack. “Are, um, you asking me out?” he asked a little skeptically. It wasn’t like Stiles had never been asked out before, he even dated a guy Danny for over a year in college. But this was very different. This was a guy that just weeks before he was cursing out for being different, for being not _human_ , for… for scaring him, for being related to the man in his nightmares.

“Yeah,” Derek shrugged, failing at holding back a smile. “Maybe I am.”

Stiles swallowed, his palms getting sweaty and his heart racing. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yeah.”

Derek did smile then. “Well, okay then.”

Stiles cleared his throat. “Uh, I get off work around 8, normally.”

“I’ll see you Friday?”

Stiles nodded. “Sure.”

He climbed into his car and turned over the engine before they could stand there and putter their way through any more flustering conversation.

“See you Friday!” Derek called as Stiles back out of the drive.

His heart didn’t stop fluttering the entire ride home.


	9. Chapter 9

Malia and Allison returned on Wednesday so Stiles found himself seeing Derek before their – Stiles has a hard time calling it a date, it still feels fake. They all congregated at the Hale house to talk over the recent events. Malia was an alpha, Laura had inexplicably returned to her real age, and apparently Talia Hale had flown in to visit. Stiles was very shocked to be standing in front of Derek’s mother when the door opened.

Her chest rattled with each breath as if something inside didn’t stitch together correctly. “Hello, Stiles,” she smiled at him. “Deaton told me a lot about you.”

Stiles blushed furiously, worried about what kind of gossip his teacher might have been spewing. The man didn’t talk much, but when he did… “You know Deaton?”

Talia smiled gently. “He was my emissary before the pack split. Deaton wisely chose to be a third party to avoid conflict.”

Talia showed Stiles in. Malia stood in a corner, her arms crossed and eyes down as if she was trying to hold herself together. Allison sat nearby, eyes tried. Laura sat sheepishly next to Derek, avoiding her mother’s eyes. There was a curly haired boy sitting on the coffee table Stiles had never met and Cora perched on the arm of the couch. “So where are we at?” Stiles asked into the odd silence.

Stiles phone buzzed in his pocket, but he ignored it.

“We need to decide who should be alpha,” Talia said fondly, if not a bit sadly. “Perhaps I was too hasty when I gave my strength away.”

Laura flinched and turned her head away, Derek placing a comforting hand on her knee. Stiles’s phone buzzed again with another text message.

“No one could have known this would happen,” Allison interjected. Stiles wondered if she knew more about the Hale family dynamic than he did at this point. “What’s important is that you all agree on who the power belongs to so you can settle as a pack. I, personally, am willing to work with any of you. You have all proven yourselves to be caring and resourceful and capable of handling the mantle and relations,” she said as diplomatically as possible. “I realize I have no real say, as someone outside of pack, but you’re a strong group, I just wish for your best and I believe any option could be beneficial.”

“Not me,” Malia said, biting the words out from the corner. “I don’t want this. Especially after…”

Stiles frowned at the way Malia, of all people, shied away in the corner. He had a gut feeling she wasn’t able to civilly convince her mother to give the status up.

“I can’t,” Laura said, her voice choking up with tears. “I’m so sorry, mom. I just, I couldn’t handle it and,” she cried a bit, “it hurt the pack. I can’t do that again. I’m sorry, I’m-“

Talia walked over to her eldest and wrapped Laura into her arms, shushing her. “It’s not your fault, sweetheart. I should have made sure you were ready, that you wanted it.”

“I thought I was,” Laura said with a soft sob.

Stiles looked between Derek and Cora, who were staring at each other with uncomfortable looks.

“Isaac?” Talia asked when Laura calmed down.

The tall boy jolted, almost falling off his seat, eyes wide and terrified. “Wh-what? No. I mean – that’s not –”

“Your opinion, Isaac,” Talia said calmly. “Who do you think should be alpha?”

“Right, couldn’t go to me anyway. I’m not Malia’s blood or bitten,” Isaac said, more to himself than anyone else. He seemed to be calmer, remembering that. “Uhh…” he looked between Cora and Derek.

“I vote Derek,” Cora said, standing with her chin up. “He’s the only one who even noticed Laura was in trouble. And we all know I have a temper.”

“And I don’t?” Derek scoffed, his shoulders hunching to make himself smaller.

“She has a point,” Laura hedged, rocking sideways to brush her shoulder with her brother. “You were always the one to challenge me when I was being stupid, and calm me down when I fled.”

“I-” Derek’s eyes were large and terrified.

“And you always break up the fights between me and Cora,” Isaac said.

“But-” Derek started.

“And you’re good at listening even if you pretend you’re not,” Malia said with a smirk.

“Derek?” his mother asked. “Is this something you’re comfortable with?”

Derek just looked at everyone with eyes the size of the moon, his jaw slack.

Stiles phone buzzed again, this time on a ring. He fumbled it out of his pocket to turn off when his vision blurred. The house was gone, replaced by a dark basement, a corpse, and the number 5 seared into the wall.

He blinked back to reality to find all the wolves on high alert, none looking his way. “What was that?” Laura asked.

“It sounded like a woman screaming.”

Allison frowned, not having heard anything.

“Lydia,” Stiles breathed. He looked at his silent phone, a missed call from Lydia and two texts: _I just drove myself to Eichen House.//The feel of this place is rotten. Still don’t know why I’m here._

Stiles darted out of the house, racing for his car. There were calls of his name but there was no time to waste. If Lydia screamed, he needed to be there. He owed her that much.

“Stiles!” Derek yelled chasing after him.

“Look, I don’t have time!” he snapped, climbing into his Jeep.

“Fine!” Derek snapped, opening the passenger door and pulling himself in.

Stiles just looked him over and turned the key. “Fine.”

Stiles sped out of the preserve, giving Derek instructions to tell his family where they were going and why. “Only in Beacon Hills, I swear to god,” Stiles muttered as he strategically sped through the town. He knew where all the speed traps were. “Maybe I _should_ leave. Nothing this crazy happened when I was in college.”

Derek stayed silent as Stiles drove. They screeched to a halt outside the facility’s gate. Lydia stood there, her red hair a bit frizzy and make up smeared around her eyes like she’d been crying.

“Lydia!” he called, racing out to her. “Are you okay? Yes? Okay?” He pulled her into a hug before she could protest. “Jesus, I blacked out and saw this crap and then I came back to everyone having heard your scream. I just…”

“There was a body,” she said listlessly. “All bandaged.”

“Inside a hole in the wall?”

She nodded. “Our magics are getting mixed again,” she hiccupped. “I was at the station earlier today, again. You weren’t there.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

“So it’s about the bombing,” she gathered, looking back at the admittedly creepy ass building. Stiles was just happy it was daytime. “This too, I think.”

“Why do you think they’re connected?” he asked. Stiles looked over to Derek who was standing by the car with a frown, probably listening in. Stiles gave him an apologetic smile but quickly diverted his sight back to Lydia.

“Why else would I go two places in one day without finding anything new at the station?” she huffed. Stiles looked her over. She was in no state to be alone right now. Her car was half a block down the road.

“Give me your keys, I’m driving you home. Derek, can you take care of my car?” He tossed over his own keys, which Derek snatched from the air. “I’ll see you Friday?” he said, maybe a little hopefully.

“Yeah, sure,” Derek said with a shrug.

In the quiet of Lydia’s car she tried to snuggle up against the window. “I see things have changed between you and Derek.”

Stiles bit his lip. “Kinda. I mean. He asked me out.” He tried to play it off coolly, but missed by a mile.

Lydia snorted, a very unlady like sound she only made when she was too tired to care about appearances. “I think he’s good for you. Red strings and all that.”

“Unsolved crime cases?” Stiles asked confused, thinking of the cork board behind his dad’s desk that tied pinned pieces of evidence together.

“You would go there. Learn your mythology, Stiles,” she sighed. They made their way to her mother’s place and Lydia dragged him inside for a glass of wine. “I’m leaving tomorrow, but I don’t want this hanging over my head.”

“We’ll get to the bottom of it,” he assured her.

“Just, be careful, okay?”

“Yeah, you too.” Stiles sipped his wine and saw that basement corpse again. This was almost worse than learning the druidic arts, he thought. His magic was getting away from him.

X

“I’m surprised to find you asking for my help,” Deaton admitted. “You’ve been so headstrong before.”

Stiles sighed and spun around on the stool again. He wished Scott could be here if for no other reason than to slap him if he convinced himself out of this. Alas, Scott was in the next room shaving a dog for surgery. “Yeah, yeah, I’m a bad student, yada yada whatever. Just let me know what to do to stop these visions.”

Deaton looked at him sternly from where he was imputing data into his computer. “It’s not a matter of stopping them, Stiles. Your magic has chosen to manifest this way because _you_ refused to let it manifest outwardly.”

“But what if I start to let them… manifest outwardly,” Stiles grumbled, kicking lightly at a low cabinet.

Deaton raised an eyebrow at him, one of those patented blank faces that somehow still expressed the most condescending emotions. “You’re willing to take you training seriously?” he asked with skepticism.

Stiles shrugged. “I guess.”

“You have a lot of catching up to do, it won’t be easy,” he warned.

“Well it can’t be worse than blacking out to see some dead body while driving,” Stiles huffed. Lydia's was thankfully close to the vet clinic so Stiles was able to walk, but he saw that basement twice more in that short distance. He didn't want to think what kind of crash it could lead to.

Deaton gave an exasperated sigh as if this wasn’t what he had been pushing Stiles to do for years. “Okay. Let’s start now.”

“Now?”

Deaton nodded. “If we’re doing this, you’re not getting a break for a while.”

“Perfect,” Stiles said deadpan.

It was hours later, Stiles shaking from exertion as he practiced while Deaton operated on a dog in the next room. Someone knocked on the partition between the lobby and secretarial area. Stiles knew Deaton didn’t have a secretary and both he and Scott were busy, so he left Deaton’s office to tell the patron they were busy.

Of course, it was Talia Hale. “Stiles,” she smiled, her voice carrying that bit of wheeze from a once shredded lung. “I was hoping to find Deaton.”

“He’s in surgery,” Stiles offered.

“I can hear that,” she said, “but I figured you could pass on the message. Malia is going to transfer power to Derek, but we were hoping for an emissary to be there to help guide the process since Malia is so new to it. Perhaps you could do it?”

Stiles blanched. “No, uh, I’m not really trained for those things. When do you need him.”

“Soon, if possible,” Talia requested. “The power isn’t settling with Malia well.”

“Okay,” Stiles said.

“How’s your friend,” Talia asked. “The banshee?”

Stiles nodded. “Lydia’s leaving town in the morning, but she’s okay, for now.”

Talia nodded, making Stiles feel like he was in the presence of a queen. “I hope for her future, then.”

That night, Deaton ended up dragging Stiles to the Hale house to watch over the proceedings. Deaton did some mumbo jumbo, connecting his energy with Malia’s to help it travel from one vessel to another. It was actually kind of amazing to watch, the surge of power, the way Malia’s eyes flashed red then blue at the same time Derek’s flashed blue then red.

Both of them gasped, the transfer of energy leaving them both feeling wasted and at a loss for air. Derek lifted his head and caught Stiles’s eye, glaring red. It took his breath away… not in a good way.

Stiles swallowed and took a step back, trying to shake the feeling of Peter standing over his hospital bed, raving and dripping black blood.

Out of the corner of his eye, Stiles saw Allison give Malia a comforting pat on the shoulder.

Stiles turned to Deaton, who had broken his energy from either werewolf and was putting his coat back on. “I’m heading out,” Stiles said. Cora had handed over his keys when he got there, his Jeep sitting in the drive where Derek parked it. “See you tomorrow before work.” Stiles lamented his lack of art time, but Deaton was insistent on Stiles practicing with him for a few hours every day, at the very least. Stiles looked over his shoulder to see Derek still staring at him, his pack all giving him support.

“Friday?” Stiles mouthed silently.

Derek shrugged and looked away.

Stiles tried to ignore the gnawing at his stomach, like he had somehow lost the opportunity for something great.


	10. Chapter 10

Stiles was about to find Tara to take over for his lunch shift when Malia entered the station. She didn’t look much better than last night, large bags under her eyes. “Hey, what are you doing up?”

She tried to smile. “Couldn’t sleep. Figured I’d come visit. Turns out, none of us have your number and that frankly seems ridiculous at this point.”

Stiles laughed and pulled out his phone. “Well, since you’re here anyway, do you wanna grab lunch with me?”

“Midnight snack,” she smirked. “Yeah, sure,” she said with a shrug.

When Stiles was signed out for break, the two of them headed to the diner Stiles normally frequented for dinner with his dad. “How are you holding up?” Stiles asked.

Malia shrugged again, methodically tearing apart a napkin. “I felt like I was bursting at the seams but now I feel empty.”

Stiles hummed. “Deaton’s sisters a shrink if you ever want to talk. She personally creeps me out, so I avoid her as much as I can.”

Malia sighed and melted back into the diner booth. “I’m talking to Allison about it, a bit. She… back in Mexico before I... she told me about her Aunt. Apparently when she was still seventeen her grandfather, Gerard, died of cancer, and it was found out that her aunt had been murdering masses of werewolves, burned a family alive somewhere in Oregon. But Gerard had been covering it up, and Kate was head of the household and half the Argents were corrupt.”

Stiles frowned, he hadn’t heard about this part of her history. “Allison, as the next female Argent, was next in line, and essentially they planned a coup so Allison could take over the moment she turned eighteen. So she gets what its’ like, to have to… take care of your family,” Malia scoffed with a roll of her eyes. “It just sucks.”

“I believe it.”

They sat in semi awkward silence until the waitress appeared with their food, Malia just getting fries and shake as her ‘midnight’ snack.

“I have a confession to make,” Malia said, dunking a fry into her chocolate shake with the gloomiest expression Stiles had ever seen someone doing said task, and Stiles had sat across Kira doing the same thing when he helped her through her break up with Scott a few years back. “I didn’t just magnanimously come to see you because I couldn’t sleep.”

“Oh, so there was a reason behind the visit?” Stiles smirked to hide the swooping feeling in his stomach.

Malia let out a heavy sigh, clearly frustrated with whatever brought her to him. “Derek wanted to let you know that he has to cancel tomorrow.”

Stiles blinked, his mouth stretching into a thin line. It sounded like more than just a rescheduling. He picked up a fry and dunked it in his mound of ketchup. “Oh, okay.” He tried to ignore the way something chewed on his insides and focus on the taste of potato and oil and ketchup.

“Just okay?” Malia hedged.

Stiles shrugged, getting his hands on his sandwich as he still chewed. “I mean, it’s not like we’ve known each other all that long. Sometimes things just don’t happen.” Stiles took a big bite of his turkey club to shut himself up but it didn’t quite work. “Besides,” he said with his mouth full, “Derek’s a, you know,” he flapped his hand at her to get the point across. “It’s probably for the best. I’m a little fucked up and –” he swallowed his food with a dry gulp, wincing at the scratch of his throat. “It just didn’t really make sense in the first place.”

He didn’t think about how Derek was the first person in a long time he had wanted to kiss, the first werewolf who had gotten on his good side, the first person to see his scars and not look at him with pity or disdain or disgust. He didn’t think about how Derek looked out for his mental health, who helped him through panic attacks like he’d known Stiles all his life. He didn’t think about how easy conversation could be between them, flowing from superficial to serious. He didn’t think of how attractive Derek was or how kind or how protective.

Instead, Stiles focused on the image of Derek transforming into a wolf, of his red eyes, of the way they reminded him of the man who had tried to kill him. How that was Derek’s uncle, Malia’s father.

Even the water he used to clear his throat tasted sour.

“He’s adjusting to the new power,” Malia said, “and if anyone gets how disorienting and overwhelming that can be at first, it’s me. Plus, Talia’s in town still and Derek’s doing a crash course on politics and some other pack mumbo jumbo about stability to help him keep focus as an alpha. It’s a lot to handle. Just, give him time, okay?”

She sounded hopeful but her eyes were guarded. Malia had seen something in Derek when he told her to cancel things with Stiles. She must be hoping for Derek to come around as much as she was hoping for Stiles, but a part of her was thinking it just wasn’t going to happen. Stiles repeated that to himself. It was a technique he often used to stop looking towards the past and dwelling on what-if’s and could-have-been’s. It just wasn’t going to happen.

Besides, Stiles reminded himself. He still had work, and Deaton was training him to the bone now that Stiles was taking things seriously, he still ached from this morning’s practice, and Stiles wanted to keep some time for his artwork.

He didn’t have time for Derek.

“Sure,” he told Malia, but they both knew it was an empty promise.

They kept conversation on lighter things after that: the upcoming marvel movie, what kind of pastries she bakes at her morning job, what kind of things Stiles liked to paint. Then they split the check and parted ways. Stiles still had the rest of the day’s work to do.

X

“We’re going into the woods today,” Deaton announced when Stiles reported for morning duty. He even switched shifts to work a bit later to get more training time in, since he didn’t need to be off by 8 today and he would be better off with busy work at that time.

“What? Why?” Stiles whined. After everything, he still hated the woods.

“Because,” Deaton said. “You’re still afraid of your powers and the world of energy that helps facilitate them. Until you can get over that, you’ll never be able to have strong control over your spark.”

Stiles let out a long suffering sigh and resigned himself to the torment of the day. They made their way to the same clearing Stiles and Deaton often frequented. The large tree stump lay a swirling mass of energy, each ring concentrating more of the earth’s natural flow of magic tighter as multiple currents converged at a singular point.

“Same as always then?” Stiles asked.

“Not this time, Mr. Stilinski.”

Stiles rolled his eyes but let Deaton continue without commenting. Deaton instructed him to sit on the nemeton like usual but this time, instead of pouring is spark into the currents in the earth, Stiles was told to stretch his energy and see the power around him. It sounded like what normally happened when Stiles let his energy go into the earth, but they both knew there was a big difference between being swept away by a large use of magic and controlling his energy to do a task on purpose.

“So like Eragon that shit,” Stiles said.

Deaton looked at him blankly. Stiles would never know if Deaton got that reference or not, but always assumed Deaton never bothered to read anything fictional so the point was moot. Stiles rolled his eyes and sat on the stump the way he had a number of times before, and closed his eyes. This time, however, instead of pulsing his own pent up magic into the roots of the trees, he let his store of power trickle in, spreading over ring and root until Stiles was connected with the whole clearing. His spark reacted off the currents, freely following the flow of natural energy to map out his surroundings.

Then, behind his closed eyes, his vision changed.   He saw the basement, the number 5, the corpse wrapped in bandages. He saw the crazed man who had bombed the station as he ranted about demons and glowing eyes, a sight Stiles had only before seen on scratchy surveillance footage. He saw the roots of the nemeton digging deep into the earth, slowly rotting even as they strived for any drop of power to keep it alive. He saw a darkness burrowing away at its core. He saw a once grand tree before its trunk had to be cut. And he saw a woman hide a mason jar between the once powerful nematon’s roots. He saw the clearing, with just himself, powerful lights blasting from all sides, his shadow spilling every direction, and the thrum of something trying to reach his ears but not quite making it.

Stiles gasped awake, falling to his side as the visions subsided. Deaton was by his side with a worried and puzzled look to his normally blank demeanor.

“Did you know that would happen?” Stiles croaked, still trying to get air into his lungs. “Did you know why the tree was cut down?”

Deaton’s eyes widened, his forehead creasing. “No, I… why?   What did you see?”

Deaton helped Stiles to a seated position. Stiles noticed the way the vet’s fingers skimmed the tree’s trunk, trying to sense what Stiles had, but he came up empty.

“There’s something dark here. It’s why the tree died in the first place, I think,” Stiles explained.

Stiles’s phone ringed. He checked it, expecting to ignore the call, but saw Lydia’s name on the screen.

“Hello?” he said.

“On the plane,” Lydia said a bit breathlessly, “just as it was taking off… I saw two of you, Stiles. And the other one looked sick.”

Stiles tried to piece this information together. His power of visions always seemed to coincide with Lydia’s now that he’s been getting them. They go together, somehow. Stiles scrambled for his bag and pulled out a notebook, writing down everything he saw plus Lydia’s vision. “Thanks, Lydia. I’ll keep you updated.”

“God help you if you get hurt. You better be in one piece by the time my next visit comes around,” she hissed over the line.

“I’ll try my best,” he smiled. “Now go focus on all your genius mathematics and whatever. The world needs you.”

There were a few beats of silence before Lydia sighed and told Stiles to take care of himself, and hung up. Stiles looked down at his notepad and then back to Deaton.

“I think I have some research to do. Maybe get some detectives on my side.”

Pressing matters aside, Deaton didn’t let him go that easily. They finished up their morning training, going back to basics that didn’t involve the currents, focusing instead upon symbols and manipulating energy. It was exhausting. He almost forgot about his notepad by the time he reached the station, but he ran into Kira first thing.

“Hey, foxy lady,” Stiles said, pulling up a chair next to her desk. “I need you to look into somethings for me.”

Kira looked over the notepad and frowned. She then turned her laptop around so Stiles could see the monitor. “Already on it,” she said gravely. There was a picture of the corpse from the Eichen House, and an army photo from when he was still alive up. Then a picture of the man and a woman who looked just like Kira.

“What the fuck?” Stiles asked.

“My mom,” she said, chewing on her lip. “We, uh, don’t really age much until we have kids of our own,” she explained.

“Freaky, but I’ll swing with it.”

Kira swatted at his arm. “I’ll get back to you, go man the front desk.”

“Yes ma’am,” he saluted. Stiles walked away, the both of them feeling uneasy.  


	11. Chapter 11

Stiles stared bleary eyed at his painting. He couldn’t stop the itch under his skin to pick up his art tools when he got home, even though it had been nearing midnight. Now four in the morning, Stiles only had a few hours to catch some sleep before Deaton demanded his presence for training.

The letter five, as it turned out, wasn’t a letter five, but a Japanese symbol. Kira had been on the phone with her mother in New York all afternoon. Through some strenuous digging, Kira had managed to learn that the station bomber had once been army buddies with the bandaged corpse that was still sitting in the morgue at Beacon Hills Hospital.

But then came the dark part. Kira’s mother had relayed a story of a nogitsune that had once possessed her lover’s dead body, summoned by her rage. Mrs. Yukimura had trapped it in the nemeton.

Stiles looked at the tree he painted, one he saw in his vision, the nemeton at its full glory and the roots that dug deep under the ground. There was something eerily familiar about the painting. He snapped a picture on his phone and texted it to Lydia. He didn’t expect her to be up, but ten minutes later as he was crawling into bed his phone buzzed. A handful of papers with the same tree drawn on it: one on the back of what Stiles recognized as Lydia’s AP chemistry notebook. It was the same tree she had been drawing when she discovered her banshee powers and they faced down the dark druid.

His life was full of so many tangles.

When Stiles made it to the station after training the next morning, Kira was as her desk with a black throwing star.

“What’s that for?” Stiles asked.

Kira looked down at the weapon sadly. “It’s one of my tails.”

The confession pulled Stiles up short. Those types of things weren’t said lightly. Kitsune’s kept their tails secret, hidden. They were powerful.

“Why do you have one of your tails?” Stiles asked cautiously.

“If there’s a nogitusne in town, I could use it to fight it,” she said.

Stiles sat down opposite Kira, leaning his elbows on her desk. “Do you really think…”

“It’s gone,” Kira said. “I followed my mom’s instructions. The jar is empty.”

His heart plummeted. All Stiles wanted was for these kinds of things to stop. “I should tell Deaton,” Stiles said, standing a bit numbly. They hadn’t gone back to the clearing today, Deaton shifty with the knowledge that such a powerful demon had been captive there without his knowledge.

“Anyone supernatural should be on the lookout. Jordan and I are going to make the rounds to the families in town that aren’t all, you know.”

Stiles chewed on his lip. “I’ll tell the Hales.”

“Yeah?” Kira said, “That’ll be a great help. We have a rookie in today that can take over your job. The Hales should probably know sooner than later. They might be able to help if something happens. Oh! And Allison, too. Can you swing by her place?”

“Yeah, no problem,” Stiles said, already collecting his things. “This…,” he said stalling by her desk, “this is bad, isn’t it.”

“It could be,” she said. “It really could be.”

Stiles stopped by Allison’s place first to let her know to keep her eye open. She said there was someone who might have information on how to kill a nogitsune, but it could be tricky to get the information. “I guess I’m going on a business trip,” she said, chewing the inside of her cheek. “Do I tell Scott? I mean, you know how he weirds out about the supernatural.”

Stiles had been contemplating the same thing. “I don’t know,” he said honestly, “I’ll leave it to you.”

They parted ways and Stiles braced himself for the Hale house. He was still uncomfortable driving into the woods, but his grip on the steering wheel wasn’t as white-knuckled as before. He didn’t know if it was Deaton’s take on immersion therapy or the fact that, despite everything, he trusted the Hales, but he was the calmest he was ever been going into the woods. Still anxious beyond belief, but calmer than before.

Derek stepped outside and waited on the porch the moment Stiles came into view of the house. His arms were crossed and his chest puffed like he was posturing defensively. Stiles rolled his eyes. He pulled into park and hopped out of the Jeep.

“What is it?” Derek asked, his eyes scanning Stiles.

“Nothing good. Are the others home?”

“Why?”

Stiles shook his head. It was one step forward and ten steps back with them. “So I don’t have to repeat myself. Can we?”

Derek sighed, dropping his arms and opening the door. Talia was sitting on the couch, checking the contents of her purse as Laura pulled her jacket on. “My mother was just leaving,” Derek said.

There was a suitcase waiting by the back hall leading to the garage. Talia looked up, her senses alert. “What’s wrong? Should I stay?”

Stiles side eyed Derek. It was probably safer if Talia left. She wasn’t exactly the strong alpha she once was, even if she had knowledge the rest of them didn’t. Stiles shook his head the same time Derek said, “You have a life to get back to Mom, no reason to keep here.”

Talia and Laura exchanged looks, Laura’s face hardening.

“Really guys,” Stiles spoke up, “it’s fine. I’m just helping out Kira and Parrish. We have to alert all the supernatural families in the area about a thing with the nemeton, but there’s already things in the works to prevent… damages.” Stiles grimaced at how awkward he sounded, but it was enough.

After a few more tense moments, a tender goodbye, and a fierce insistence to be kept updated, Talia was out the back door, Laura following with the car keys.

“Issac’s gone back to school. Cora’s at work. I think Malia’s in the woods. She hasn’t been sleeping.”

“Yeah, I know,” Stiles sighed, sitting on the arm of the couch. “Sorry to rush your goodbyes,” he said, nodding to the back where Talia and Laura had left. “But this is actually kind of… I don’t even know.”

Silence stretched between them, Stiles tracing the pattern of woodgrain on the floor with his eyes as he tries to think of what to say.

“How are you holding up?” Stiles asked, biting at his lower lip.

“Good enough. Wanna tell me what’s going on?”

Stiles ducked his head further. “There’s a… a thing called a nogitsune. It was trapped in the nemeton, ages ago, but it got out. We’re not sure how, but.” Stiles shrugged. “It’s loose and it could be anything from a fly to a person, based off the info Kira got me. We don’t know how strong it is, or if it’s been hosting in someone. We’re at a loss until it does something. So, alerting as many people as we can to be aware, I guess.” Stiles stood up and looked at Derek. He swallowed something that tasted an awful lot like pride and looked away again. “I guess that’s all…”

Stiles headed for the door, which meant he’d have to pass Derek. God, this was a mistake.

“Stiles, wait,” Derek said, reaching a hand out to stop Stiles in his tracks. Stiles looked up, startled. “You said this thing was being kept in the nemeton?”

He nodded, biting his tongue from blathering nonsense.

“Haven’t you been pumping your magic into it?”

Stiles froze. It was something he remembered Deaton telling Talia the other night on why Stiles’s training was so far behind. His mind raced over all the times Stiles had sat on that very tree stump, refusing to use his magic to the point of crippling agony until Deaton forced him to spill his powers into the earth. How many times had he been dragged out into the woods to give his spark away, feeding the forest, but perhaps also an endless void of dark hunger…

“Shit,” Stiles said, flashes of his previous visions coming back at him. His shadow everywhere as lights blinded him from every side. The tree, tall and living. The roots, withering. “Shit,” Stiles said again, pushing past Derek to outside. He scanned the tree line as if he could somehow see the danger, somehow stop it at its tracks. But there was nothing lurking in the woods. Whatever this thing was, it had already made its escape.

“Stiles, calm down,” Derek said, his voice sounding far away.

Stiles shook his head, his panic tapping into a power he had spent nine years suppressing. Suddenly the task that had triggered his visions the previous morning now awoke his sight in a way Stiles didn’t think possible. He had tapped into the currents, lights of life shining brightly all around him. Even when he closed his eyes he could see them. He followed the currents and wisps of his own energy in the ground with his mind until, there it was. A black hole amongst all the vibrancy of the living.

“Stiles!” Derek yelled, shaking him. The werewolf looked panicked.

Something tickled at his nose, wet and thick. He reached up, his fingers coming away with blood.

“What did you do?” Derek asked in fury and confusion.

“I’m fine,” Stiles croaked, his voice hoarse. He took a step forward and his knees buckled.

In an easy motion, Derek caught Stiles in his arms and righted the man. “ _Stiles_.”

“I need to call… to call Kira. Or m’dad.”

“Let me get you inside first,” Derek grumbled, lifting Stiles when it was clear he couldn’t keep his own body up.

“Hizz sool,” Stiles murmured into the crook of Derek’s neck and then promptly passed out.  

 


	12. Chapter 12

When Stiles woke up it was to the musky grey darkness of an unlit room as the sun wasn’t quite done setting. The house was silent and there was a blanket over him. He groaned as he tried to sit up, remembering quickly where he was and how he passed out. A single slip of pink paper was stuck to the coffee table with: _STILES!_ scrawled over it in Malia’s messy handwriting.

Under his name he had to squint to decipher the words she wrote. _Derek left me in charge of babysitting you after something happened. He was on the phone with Kira when he left. But I heard him howl and I got to help so just sit tight! –M_

Stiles sighed and crumpled the paper a bit. He dug his phone out of his pocket to call Scott, who probably knew where everyone was without actually _being_ there, so Stiles wouldn’t be distracting from any potential danger. As he pulled up his contents there was a creek of a door hinge coming from the back.

“Derek?” he called at the silence. If the wolves came home they wouldn’t be so quiet, would they? Stiles stood, sparks under his skin calling him to his feet. “Malia?”

A chill ran down Stiles’s spine a split second before he saw him… it.   A figure about his height stood on the shadow of the back hall, still and menacing. “Trust me,” the man said, “they’re busy.”

He sounded amused. Worse, he sounded just like…

The man stepped out of the shadow and into the light spilling in from the kitchen window. They could have been twins, only this guy was in serious need of a nap. Stiles gulped. He took an involuntary step back and his calf hit the coffee table.

“What are you?”

“Everyone has it but no one can lose it, what is it?”

It was a riddle, Stiles noted, a twist in his gut. His brain searched for an answer before remembering his visions. “A shadow.”

The man who looked like him smirked with the barest hint of movement. “You cannot see me, hear me, or touch me. I lie behind the stars and alter what is real. I am what you really fear. Close your eyes and I come near. What am I?”

Okay, Gollum, I’ll play your game, he thought. “The Dark.”

Stiles shuffled to his left to get out between the couch and table.

“Greater than God,” the thing said, “Worse than the Devil. Poor people have it, rich people want it. If you eat it you will die. What am I?”

“Nothing,” Stiles said, his breath tightening in his chest.

“I have to thank you, Stiles,” the copy stepped forward, face blank but eyes maniacal. There looked like a scar on his cheek, but as Stiles looked closer it appeared to be a crack, like this façade wasn’t complete or was already failing. “Without your reluctance I never would have found my way out of that trap.”

“What are you doing here?” Stiles asked, creeping sideways closer to the front door.

“Give me food, and I will live. Give me water, and I will die. What am I?”

Stiles looked around frantic for signs of what the creature said he’d done. “Fire.”

There was no smoke, no heat. But then the shadow man lifted his hands and somehow Stiles felt his own hands raising. A spark of his own energy flickered to life and there was fire at his fingertips.

“I am what you will become!” the thing shouted.

“Dust,” Stiles whispered.

Fire leapt from his fingers and started eating everything in its path, from candlestick to bonfire in the space of a heartbeat. Stiles tried to get to the door but everywhere his hands went, fire spouted. There was a crash of windows, someone shouting for Stiles to put his hands together. He did, palm to palm, the fire burning itself out and searing his skin. He looked up to see Deaton, rag over his mouth and injection needle in his hand. Deaton tried to reach the Stiles mimic with the syringe but the demon cackled, his face breaking away into little bits of dust and floating off with the roar of the flame.

“Oh, great, he can decorporealize,” Stiles wheezed.

Deaton rushed over to his side, wrapping an arm around Stiles’s waist as the young spark bent to try and catch his breath. Fire was still burning all around them. The path to the window was still free and they hurried forward, trying their best not to suffocate in the smoke.

It felt like an eternity as they made their way to outside the burning house. He gasped in the cleaner air greedily.

“We have to contain this!” Deaton shouted over the roar of the flames.

“How?” Stiles wheezed.

Deaton gave Stiles a look he had never before seen on the vet, a mix of pity and regret and something faint calling out to Stiles to trust the older man.

“You have to suffocate it,” Deaton said. “I’m not an element user, but after this we know where your natural talents would have landed. If you can do fire, wind should be easy.”

Stiles looked at the house in a panic. “What the hell am _I_ supposed to do?”

“Drop your hands,” Deaton ordered. Stiles still had his fingers clasped tight together, burned palms sticking together. He pulled them apart, flesh peeling painfully. He dropped them to his side and looked back for instructions. “Now it’s like with the mountain ash. You have to believe that you can hold more than what is there. That with your hands you can move the air. Do you understand?”

Stiles shook his head. How could he possibly understand? Just days ago he was still hoping he could get away living as a hedge witch and draining his own powers. Fire leapt out of the window they had crawled through and Stiles jerked back. The house was burning down and he was the only one who could even try to save it.

On instinct, Stiles raised his hands, holding them out like some comic book hero manipulating the world. He didn’t know if this would work, but if his only reference was X-Men, he’d take any advice his brain could give him.

Stiles took in a lungful of air, stretching his arms wide, but instead of exhaling like a billows, Stiles gathered his imaginary strands of wind and pulled them together and up, dropping his head back and letting the air rush away with his steady breath out.

The roof of the house exploded as a tunnel of fire tried clinging to the disappearing air, but it tapered out with the lack of oxygen.

The fire department would still have to come to check for any smoking bits where fire burned too deep to be put out so quickly, but for now it was done. Stiles fell to his knees. Deaton was by his side in an instant, his unused syringe in his hand again.

“What is that?” Stiles asked.

“Did it touch you?”

“Wha- no? Why?”

Stiles could see through his exhaustion Deaton weighing his options when ultimately Deaton stuck the needle into Stiles’s thigh.

He passed out again, whether from the over use of magic or the sight of a needle going into his skin, Stiles couldn’t be sure.

X

Stiles woke up in the back of an ambulance, paramedics treating him for smoke inhalation and palms padded with burn cream and gauze. They were still at the Hale house, ambulance parked and back doors open. Deaton stood by the door with his own oxygen mask.

It took a few moments before Stiles was able to convince the paramedics to let him up. By then, Derek was standing by Deaton, eyes wide and shoulders tense. Stiles hopped out of the ambulance.

“Hey,” Stiles coughed.

“Are you okay?” Derek asked, frowning.

Stiles nodded, still feeling a little dizzy. “What happened?”

Derek frowned and looked to Deaton and the back to the house that was half burnt to the ground. “It distracted us at the school, some weird mind trick it took a while to get out of. A number of kids in the summer classes had been… infected somehow but it.”

“It came to the house,” Deaton filled into the silence. “Obviously for a number of reasons,” he frowned. “You were out of it when I asked about if the nogitsune touched you so I injected you with the Letharia Vulpina, a plant similar to wolf’s bane that can at some degree restrain the power of a kitsune, even one such as this.”

Stiles groaned and rolled his neck. He felt terrible. And guilty. The smoke from the house was still covering the sky. “What would the thing touching me have done?”

Derek and Deaton shared a look. “We’re not sure,” Deaton said. “But considering it’s taken your form after your magic…”

“It might just take the rest of me,” Stiles surmised. “Great.” He tiredly rubbed at his eyes then yelped, his skin shocking itself. It sort of felt like static shock but clearly fueled by magic. “What the fuck?” His fingers were sparking.

While his attention was on his hands, Derek reached over and gently held them, careful of the bandaged sections. Stiles jumped at the contact. He looked up with a blush but Derek’s eyes were glowing red and focused on his hands. “It looks just like Kira’s,” he said with confusion. Derek looked up and they caught each other’s eyes, Derek still holding his hand for a beat or two too long.

“Stealing other people’s magic again?” Stiles sighed.

Deaton shrugged. “It’s possible it’s just a side effect of your elemental powers.”

Stiles sighed, putting his hand to his chest to hold back a cough. “We’ll deal with it later. What the hell are we going to do about the psychopathic fox demon that can turn into dust at will and looks just like me at current?”

Malia came jogging up with Kira. “I just got off the phone with Allison,” Kira said with a tense smile. “She may have something. We won’t know for sure until tomorrow afternoon, but she and her dad have an appointment with a… Silverfinger?”

“Oh, good,” Stiles said, “we’re getting into the codenames.” Stiles shook his head. This is never what he wanted with his life. He spotted his dad talking with a few firemen. He nodded towards his dad and gave his present company a tired grin. “I gotta see my dad. Keep me updated.”

With one last lingering glance to Derek, Stiles walked away. When his dad noticed him, the look of relief on the Sheriff’s face made Stiles break into a run. His dad met him half way and they hugged tightly. It had been a few years since one of them had been in real danger, it wasn’t anything they would ever get used to. Not something they should get used to.  

“I’m okay, dad,” Stiles said into his father’s neck, still feeling the tightness of his chest from the smoke.

“I know, kiddo. I know.” The Sheriff pat Stiles on the back a few times and leaned back. “Come on, let’s get you home.”

 


	13. Chapter 13

Stiles didn’t get out of bed until after noon the next day, still feeling like he was weighed down and listless. His dad had given a few days leave from the station, but they both knew after their talk the night before that it was a sort of unofficial quitting. There was too much on his plate right now. Stiles had almost flunked out of high school back when the darach terrorized the town; now his magic was out of control, there was a dangerous creature out there wearing his face, and he was just so tired.

Scott came over to drive him to the hospital for a check-up. The only reason he wasn’t brought in to keep under observation the night before was how well he was doing after waking up, but the paramedic and made him promise to come in. Being the Sherriff’s son and the EMT knowing Melissa at the hospital would beat him if he didn’t show up also played a hand in that decision.

“So, this is weird,” Scott said during the ride. “All the, what has it…” he trailed off. Scott scrunched his forehead in his adorable confused puppy look. “Stuff.”

“Very articulate,” Stiles snorted, tapping his fingers against the half arm rest on the inside car door.

“It’s just, this is a lot of things, right?” Scott asked. “I mean, like… we normally go a few years in between supernatural threats.”

“Yeah,” Stiles sighed. “It’s my fault.”

“What!?” Scott exclaimed, nearly jumping out of his seat. “How is this _your_ fault?”

“The twisted way of the world. I stopped practicing magic, and in doing so fed the powers of an ancient evil.”

“Deep, bro. That’s what happened with Mexico, too?” Scott asked.

Stiles sighed. “Unrelated.”

“Then it’s not all your fault then,” Scott said, smacking Stiles’s arm and they pulled into the visitor parking lot. “Come on, stop sulking. You’ll catch your bad guys.”

Stiles could tell by the way Scott squirmed he was still worried, even without knowing the full scope of danger going on.

“Is Allison okay?”

Stiles looked over and smiled. “She can handle herself. Come on, let’s go.”

X

Stiles sat in the passenger seat of Scott’s car, his results from the doctor’s coming out fine with a prescription of burn cream for his hands. Scott was running to the Walmart to pick up something or other before dropping Stiles off at home. Stiles had elected to stay in the car, too distracted by his text messages to Malia.

They were staying at the Motel 5 a few blocks away until the next day when they could move into the Four Seasons downtown. It smelled better, apparently. Laura was on the phone with legal reps about fire damage and Derek was already talking to contractors. Cora was fielding Talia’s frantic phone calls. It was a mess, or so Malia said.

Stiles looked over to the sidewalk and chewed his bottom lip. He wasn’t far from their motel. And he had a few things he wanted to talk to them all about: plans against the nogitsune, apologies for burning their house down, etc.

He told himself it wasn’t to see Derek as he hopped out of the car and texted Scott not to worry about him.

The door opened to unit 17 before Stiles could even tell Malia he was there. She called out and waved with a quirky grin as if getting their house burned down and living in a motel was perfectly normal. For a moment there, Stiles too felt like everything was fine, maybe even happy. That notion disappeared the second he walked into the room. It was actually a two bedroom unit, which was pretty fancy for a motel, but Sties supposed that a lot of displaced families camped out at this place while they got back on their feet. Cora was watching TV from the pull out bed, phone to her ear but attention on American Ninja. Laura was at the desk that looked two seconds from falling apart, tapping away at her keyboard with a furrowed brow, and Derek… Derek was in one of the bedrooms yelling.

“IF I SEE YOU DOWN HERE I WILL RIP YOUR THROAT OUT MYSELF!”

“Isaac wants to drop his summer class and internship to come back during this fiasco,” Malia explained.

“Rght…” Stiles trailed off.

Cora told her mom that Stiles was there and said quick goodbyes before hanging up. “So, any word from the home front?” she asked.

Laura even lifted her head to look his way, although her fingers kept typing.

Stiles scratched the back of his neck and Malia jumped onto the pull-out next to Cora. “Uh, not really. I was actually hoping to hear more from you guys about last night. I wasn’t really in the frame of mind to process much. Wanted to also apologize for burning your house down,” he cringed.

“It’s mostly salvageable,” Laura said, waving a hand in front of her face. “And no one was hurt, except you, actually. How are your hands?”

Stiles shrugged. “Fine, mostly. But seriously, I feel bad-”

“Don’t,” Cora snorted. “That thing practically mind controlled you, which honestly doesn’t surprise me seeing how we were trapped in some winter wonderland fighting shadows for hours.”

“What?” Stiles balked.

“Tell you about it later when it’s something I can laugh about,” she said with a tight grin.

“Noted.” Stiles tapped at his leg awkwardly. He had more things to say, he did, he just didn’t remember any of it at the moment. Derek was still screaming with Isaac in the next room. “Maybe I should just…” he gestured with his thumb out the front door and started to back out but both Cora and Malia yelled at him to wait.

“Derek get off the phone!” Laura snapped, taking her shoe off and tossing it through the open door. There was a sick smack where it must have hit her brother.

“Laura!” he snapped, but she just rolled her eyes. A few seconds later, Derek stalked out of the bedroom, shoving his phone into his front pocket. “I’m getting a room on a whole different floor than you at Four Seasons.”

They continued to snark at each other. Stiles’s attention, however, was caught up on Derek’s wrist.

“You still have the bracelet,” Stiles said over the werewolves.

His little declaration created a gap of dead space. Derek shifted his weight and crossed his arms. Stiles looked over to Malia and Cora, both their wrists bare, and he hadn’t remembered one on Allison the day before. Derek had always been wearing his jacket the last few times he saw him, but today he was just wearing a tight fitting grey tee-shirt. And the bracelet Stiles had made for him back in Mexico.

“Mine fell off like the second I got alpha status,” Malia said with a shrug.

“I think I lost mine in the van somewhere around San Diego,” Cora mused. “They were very handy charms, _right Derek,_ ” she said pointedly.

Derek huffed and rolled his eyes. Stiles was distracted by the fact his 1-3 day charm bracelet was still tied to Derek’s wrist. After some quick Hale sibling bickering and a swift side punch from Cora, Derek (holding his side with a barely contained growl) looked up at the ceiling and bit out a proposal of sorts.

“I’m sorry, what?” Stiles asked, both a little shocked and not entirely sure what Derek had said.

“After you finish your training,” he said, dropping his hands to his sides. “My mom thought it would be wise, and the rest of the pack agrees, that we should bring you on as our emissary. If you’ll accept. I know you want to distance yourself from the supernatural and,” he shrugged, “Beacon Hills, so don’t feel pressured or anything.” Derek shifted his weight awkwardly and shrugged again.

“Well that was the most enthused job offer I’ve ever received,” Stiles said a little glumly. It seemed clear that Derek was the one who was pressured into this proposition.

“No, we’re really serious about this,” Cora said, punching her brother again, “about you.”

“Yeah, Stiles,” Malia cheered, jumping up to hang off his neck. “You’re awesome and you like us, admit it.”

“Plus you already saved my life,” Laura said off-handedly. “So there’s that.”

“I would say that was more thanks to your family and my friend Lydia, to be honest,” Stiles said, shirking backwards again, finding himself a little trapped by Malia still clinging to him.

“Let him go,” Derek intoned, his voice reverberating with a power that wasn’t there before. Malia dropped her arms immediately. “Let’s give him time to think this over, okay. No pressuring, got it?” Derek looked between his sisters and cousin before his eyes settled on Stiles. He nodded his head silently and turned back for the far bedroom, shutting the door behind him.

Malia glared at the closed door and then looked to Stiles with a pinched expression. She took out her phone and tapped out a message that seemed to be a novel but looked up and growled when Stiles tried to say goodbye. Seconds later Stiles’s phone buzzed.

_He wants you here, honest. He’s just got a stick up his ass about making sure you want it too. He thinks you wouldn’t because the whole Peter thing an_

_d something about you wanting to get away from here?? Idk. unclear mumbling from grumpy brows._  

Stiles read the message again, frowning. He looked up to face the Hale girls and tried his best at casual. “Right. Um. I’ll get back to you on that then..?” Stiles looked at the closed door and didn’t know what he felt. Hope? Fear? Excitement? Disappointment? He was confused, to say the least. Stiles looked back to Malia and held up his phone. He hoped his look was thankful, even if he didn’t know what it meant to him just yet. “Fell free to share my number with the group. Even if I don’t, you know… I’m sure with this whole mess going on right now you might need to get in touch.”

“Done and done, Stilinski,” Malia grinned.

Stiles waved goodbye to her, Cora, and Laura, getting a chorus of _laters_ from them in return. It was a bit of a hike back to his place from here, but he needed to clear his head to think about what it would mean to be the Hale’s emissary. To be Derek’s emissary.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: I used some of the same imagery from the Eichen House episode of teen wolf so if some of that can trigger you be cautious. it's nothing overly graphic, i don't think. viewer discretion advised.

 

Stiles had spent the morning with Deaton, working on control. He told the vet about the Hale’s offer, to which Deaton gave him a bland look and told him to finish his training first. Stiles couldn’t quite tell if Deaton approved of the idea or not. But now Stiles sat in front of a fresh canvas, a light sketch on the white. His paint brush hung limply between his fingers as his paints sat unopened to his side. He couldn’t seem to start, even with his lazy sketch already on the canvas. Stiles was exhausted from the training and his mind kept drifting to the Hale’s offer, to Derek.

He was just getting ready to give up and grab himself a beer and turn on Netflix when a knock came at the door. Stiles frowned and stood up, stretching out. He felt sore, as if he had done double lacrosse practices instead of his shaman training. Derek was at the door.

“Oh!” Stiles startled, something funny twisting inside his chest. “What are you doing here? Did something happen?” His mind quickly shifted to the nogitsune which hadn’t shown its face in a few days.

“No, everything’s okay right now,” Derek said. “Can I come in?”

Stiles felt his palms get sweaty as he stepped aside to let Derek in. “So, uh…” Stiles trailed off, shrugging. He didn’t know how to ask why Derek was there. He didn’t know how to bring up the question of their offer, of why him, of what Derek really thought about it, of what his sisters and cousin were saying. He didn’t know how to say anything really.

“Any word from Allison?” Derek asked, looking around.

“Kira’s picking her up at the airport around now,” he said, watching as Derek thumbed through his small board canvases that rested near the front door. “What are you really here for?”

Derek’s didn’t look at him, just continuing to sort through his late night paintings he hadn’t put a lot of time into. He paused at one board, picking it up and looking at it better, his expression ganging quickly from one of idle discomfort to guarded wonder and open curiosity. “Is this… me?”

Stiles stepped to stand next to Derek and look at the painting he had picked up. It was of the snarling black wolf with blue eyes, asking to be rescued. “I don’t know, maybe,” Stiles sighed. “I painted it around the time I found out what you were.

“Oh,” Derek said, putting it back down.

“Why’d you keep the bracelet?” Stiles asked, shifting the focus of Stiles’s interest to Derek’s.

Derek looked down at his wrist before puffing out his chest. “You said to keep it on until it fell off.”

“Yeah?” Stiles hedged, it should have fallen off days ago.

Derek shrugged, turning away to examine more of Stiles’s art things. “It never fell off.”

It was in that moment, looking at Derek’s hunched shoulders and cautious eyes, the same eyes in the painting, asking to be saved, that Stiles knew without really knowing, without making the conscious thought, that he was going to stay by this man’s side for as long as he could. “Derek, I-“

Stiles fell backwards, his feet giving way beneath him as if he’s stepped backwards down a stair, his vision giving way blood and screams and people choking on flies and a buzz in his ear and a young man hanging from knotted bedsheets at the top of a stairwell, onlookers rushing to see wearing pajamas and fearful smiles. The few moments of silence and a slowly swinging body gave way to chaos. Chaos.

Stiles gasped awake, wind swirling around him like a tornado had made it inside his apartment. Derek’s face was right in front of his and Stiles realized he was being held up, head almost having hit the ground. Derek’s eyes were wide and fearful, his mouth moving but all Stiles could hear was the wind and the buzz of a fly. He followed the movement of Derek’s lips, saying _Stiles! Stiles!_ Stiles was shaking. Tears pricked at his eyes. Wind whipped around them. _Stiles!_

Derek gently set Stiles down on the ground before bringing his hands up to caress Stiles’s cheeks. He leaned down and pressed their foreheads together. Stiles, almost blindly, reached up, grabbing on to Derek’s arms, trying to find purchase, _something, anything_ to ground him. Stiles’s fingers slid down Derek’s arms, on hand grazing over the bracelet at Derek’s wrist.

With all his concentration, Stiles visualized pulling the wind in towards him, connecting his wild energy to the knots of magic resting on Derek’s wrist.

Then everything stopped. Derek was still saying his name. There was no more wind and his nose was bleeding again. Derek pulled away, kneeling over him. Their eyes met, faces inches apart. Stiles was breathing heavy. “Hey,” Stiles croaked.

“Hey.” Derek cleared his throat and backed off before helping Stiles to his feet. “What did you see?”

It was the Eichen House. Stiles recognized it. He had taken a tour back in high school when he wasn’t dealing well with the second trauma of the Darach on top of still reeling from Peter’s attack. Then Morrell worked there and he had visited her a few times. It wasn’t a good facility. It helped some people, but its practices felt very Cuckoo’s Nest to him.

He remembered the fly, going into people’s noses and mouths. He remembered Deaton asking if the nogitsune had touched him, and the way it had turned into dust. Maybe that hadn’t been wholly intentional. Maybe it wasn’t strong enough yet.

“I think it’s looking for a host,” Stiles said wiping the blood from his nose. “We’ve got to get to the Eichen House. Something’s happening.”

Stiles stumbled forward, his body weak from the pull of magic. His head started to throb from the exertion. Derek reached forward to steady him. Stiles tried to smile, but his mind was already far away.

“Why did wind pick up?” Derek asked.

“I think it has ties to my magic, since it’s half built on it,” Stiles grumbled, pushing away from Derek to the table to grab his things. Deaton had been building his mage kit, a small tool box of sorts to carry essential items and ingredients. “Like how it could control the fire to… I don’t think this was on purpose. I don’t know.” There was so much he didn’t know. “We have to-”

“No, Stiles. You shouldn’t be pushing yourself,” Derek near growled. “You’re…” he trailed off, looking Stiles over where the younger man was braced himself against the kitchen table. “You’re not okay, Stiles.”

“I’m fine.”

Stiles had a moment, looking over his shoulder at Derek, where he wondered where his sudden conviction came from. When did he get so invested? When did he start wanting to risk himself for the sake of others? When did his use of magic become a deciding factor in how hard he tried to save others? When did he need to start protecting people the way he never could before?

Then he saw the look in Derek’s eye and Stiles knew when it was exactly.

Stiles squared his shoulders, the force of his will stopping the shakes in his legs. “I think we have some people to save. Will you help me?”

Derek took two steps forward. He took Stiles’s hand in his and interlaced their fingers. “You’re really not going to leave this place for your own good, are you?”

“It’s my home, Derek.”

Derek squeezed Stiles’s hand. “Yeah. Mine, too.” They stood there, electricity charging between them, although that could have been his magic mimicking Kira’s foxfire again. “Let’s go.”

X

The Echien House was on lockdown. The Sheriff and Parrish were already on scene with a couple of other deputies, trying to control the madness and make sure no patients bolted. John had quickly pulled Stiles aside to give him a run down before Stiles and Derek ran inside.

The body of the hung boy had been taken down, a sheet placed over him on the gurney near the administrative offices. A number of hallways were empty, screams heard echoing from further in the institute. Stiles let Derek lead, recognizing the walls from his visions of a corpse in bandages behind a wall. Someone screamed, a sound like Lydia’s.

Stiles knew from Morrell and Deaton that there were supernatural creatures, too dangerous for society, kept in a secret level of this building.

“Stop!” Stiles yelled. They were heading towards the chaos, but that’s not where the nogitsune would be. It had already done its deed, twisting heads to cause strife and pain and panic. If it was looking for a host, one that could sustain its doubly gained power from Stiles’s off pour of magic, it would be going to the secret level. “We’re going the wrong way.”

Stiles turned and started running towards the basement door, Derek keeping pace with him with ease. They turned a corner and ran into Morrell and Deaton, who were holding a jar of half dead flies, a few unconscious bodies in the hall behind them.

“I think the nogitsune is going for the creature prison,” Stiles blurted.

Morrell reached behind her into what looked like a leather, badass fanny-pack. “We’re going after the patients the nogitsune’s controlling. If we stop all of them, this riot should be manageable for the cops,” she said, pulling out a set of keys. She tossed them to Stiles. “Take the west staircase, it bypasses the first basement.”

Deaton nodded at Stiles, his teacher’s way of saying good luck. Stiles had to wonder if Deaton actually thought they had a chance.

Derek grabbed his hand and pulled him along until they were both running towards the stairwell. Derek jumped the railing, landing at the bottom with a sickening thud. “Keys!” Derek yelled out.

Stiles dropped them, trusting Derek. As Stiles raced towards the bottom, two steps at a time, Derek opened the door and pushed through. A cacophony of sounds hit them: shrieks and hisses and crazed threats and dark praises. Maniacal laughter rang through the stairwell and Stiles knew this prison for the supernatural only held the most insane. He just hoped they weren’t too late.

Derek must have seen something, his face shifting and lunging forward into the underground ward. The door swung with the force of Derek’s arm, hitting the far wall before ricocheting back to the frame. Stiles raced to catch it, finally reaching the true basement just as the door slammed shut, automatically locking with their only key inside.

“No,” Stiles whispered with dread. He banged on the closed door. “No! Derek! Derek!” He could see through the small window Derek fighting off a wendigo and a creature Stiles didn’t recognize. “Derek!” But he couldn’t hear anything inside. Even with Derek’s superior hearing, he wouldn’t be able to hear Stiles’s cries.

“All alone.”

Stiles spun around. His heart felt like it was beating out of his chest. His doppelganger stepped out of the shadows, even stronger than the last time Stiles had seen him. Stiles felt dizzy looking at it. The mimic stepped forward again, Stiles mirroring and stepping back. “Stay away from me.”

“But Stiles, I am your shadow.”

“No.”

“I am the part of you that you gave away.”

“No.”

He stepped back again, being crowded against the wall. It felt all too familiar, only days ago the creature spouting riddles and trapping him in a house he wanted to burn down.

“Join me, Stiles. Let us become we.”

“No!”

The mimic took another step forward, too close, close enough to touch, to become whatever Deaton had feared. He felt his lungs stop moving.

Then a swirl of darkness came together in front of him and Stiles shook as something akin to a ninja appeared between him and the nogitusne.

“Someone call for backup?”

Stiles looked up the stairs to see Kira and Allison on the landing. Allison let an arrow loose, it digging into the mimic’s thigh as the man in black attacked it with a katana not unlike the one Kira had.

“Derek’s stuck behind the door with the key but he can’t hear us,” Stiles said as Kira jumped the last set of steps to join the dark thing in fighting the nogitsune. As smart as it was, it didn’t often fight itself.

Allison let another arrow fly, this one hitting the door with an explosion. Stiles was knocked back, uninjured and the door still intact.

“A little warning!” Stiles shouted. It hadn’t even worked.

Allison clambered down the stairs to help Stiles to his feet. “That should have gotten through the soundproofing,” she explained. “Let’s get you out of here.”

“But, Derek!”

“We need his help,” she said, “but we need you out of here in case it gets too close.”

The door to the ward flung open, Derek slamming it shut behind him as quickly as possible. “Stiles!”

“Derek! Bite it!” Allison yelled over the commotion of fighting between Kira, the black thing, and the nogitsune. “Bite it!”

Allison dragged Stiles up the stairs as best she could when Stiles resisted her. Derek looked between everything, worry evident in his eye. There was no clear way of getting to the creature that seemed impervious to the wounds of an arrow and swords.

Stiles raised his hands like Storm in a battle. Wind picked up in their little basement alcove until it pushed Kira away from the fight, the darkness disappearing, poofing away like it was never there to begin with. He had the small circle surround the thing wearing his face. Tighter and tighter until it was a personal prison. It yelled, it threatened, but it was trapped in the air.

“Bite it!” Allison yelled again.

And Derek, partially shifted and eyes glowing red, sunk his teeth into the tendon between his neck and shoulder.

And the nogitsune shuddered. The crack in his face growing bigger and bigger until it fell away like sand. There was something different about the time it used its ability to drift off with the wind and get away from the burning Hale house. This time, it collapsed to the ground like gravity was taking back claim of it, until nothing was left but a fly, still trapped in the wind sphere Stiles had made.

“Trap it,” Stiles said, his voice and body shaking.

Kira holding the box she once kept her tails in, determinately marched forward and held it and the lid out. “Make it smaller,” she asked Stiles. He condensed the wind with the fly inside as best as he could. Then she closed the lid around it and told Stiles he could let it go.

Stiles did.

He looked over to Derek, who still had his shifted face on and was breathing heavily. “I think that’s my quota for life threatening situations for a while,” Stiles huffed, his knees going weak. It was okay though, Derek was there to catch him before he hit the ground. “How embarrassing would it be if I fainted again?”

“Not very,” Derek assured him. “Feel free, I’ll take you home.”

So, in the warmth of Derek’s arms, Stiles stopped holding on quite so hard. He was so very tired.


	15. Chapter 15

Stiles sat on the metal table in Deaton’s back room, being poked and prodded by Deaton and Scott to make sure there weren’t any lasting physical or magical effects from the nogitsune’s influence. His father and Derek were outside in the waiting room. Stiles complained _again_ why they couldn’t have asked Scott’s mom to look him over since she was an actual nurse and not, you know, a veterinarian. Deaton just gave a poor chiding comment about knowing what to look for and Scott told him he had fleas. One or both of those were probably not true.

“As far as I can tell,” Deaton finally gave in, “your overuse of magic hasn’t left any lasting damage. That being said we still have to work more on your control. It’s improved, but it’s not there yet.”

“Your burns are almost healed,” Scott offered with a shrug and a lopsided grin.

Stiles shook his head at the two of them and hopped off the examination table. “What about my magic?” Stiles asked as he tugged his shirt back on. “Any more visions in my future?”

“There’s no way to be sure,” Deaton said, crossing his arms with a frown. “But, given the nature of your previous visions, nothing is likely to happen unless there is a large supernatural threat again, or perhaps one tied to a nemeton. That being said, there shouldn’t be any more stolen powers. No more foxfire and no more banshee hearing. Lord knows what would happen if you mixed magics with Parish.”

Stiles shivered at the thought.

“My hypothesis is that with all the magic you were feeding the nogitsune, even with all the pent up magic you hadn’t released your body was imbalanced and it sought to fix that by borrowing from your friends. You’re lucky it wasn’t worse.”

Stiles sighed and scratched the back of his ear. “Yeah, I know. Training in the morning?”

Deaton gave him a once over before shaking his head. “Take the day off tomorrow. Get some rest.”

Stiles turned to Scott who just waggled his eyebrows suggestively before jutting his chin towards the lobby where Derek was waiting. Stiles rolled his eyes. “I’ll see you later, bro.”

“Yeah, dude, totally. I gotta get home and call Allison. We need to have a talk about taking off on secret trips to meet yakuza.”

“Former yakuza,” Stiles reminded him, as if that made anything better. Or that anyone could actually _leave_ the yakuza. “Going now,” Stiles said off Scott’s look and headed towards the lobby.

Derek was already watching to door, having heard him presumably. Stiles’s dad jumped at Stiles’s arrival, speeding over to envelop him in a hug. “Don’t scare me like that again,” the Sheriff muttered with that protective kind of anger only a parent can muster. “Jesus, kid.”

“I’m fine, you know that,” Stiles said, hugging his dad back fiercely.

Eventually they pulled back from each other, the Sheriff looking his son over in some sort of wonder and worry. “You sure you’re going to be okay?”

Stiles nodded, his eyes sliding past his dad to Derek then back to his dad. “I’m aiming for a simple life. Just me, my art, and maybe dealing with a few stray omega’s here and there.” His eyes darted to Derek again before focusing back on his dad. “I’m doing this right this time around, with Deaton. A lot of my problems should go away, and if we’re lucky,” Stiles shrugged. “Working with the local pack should help keep the big bads away, at least.”

His dad gave his shoulder a tight squeeze and nodded, a serious look in his eye. “Alright, son, but Jordan and Kira are staying in the loop. And you tell that Allison girl that if she wants to help she should come to me and become an official consultant so she’s not sneaking off like some vigilante after the fight’s over.”

“Will do, dad,” Stiles grinned, hugging his dad again. After the promise to get breakfast together that weekend, his dad headed out, needing to get back to the Station to help his two supernatural deputies find a way to cover that night’s events and keep that secret ward of the Eichen House stay hidden.  

That left Derek and Stiles alone in the vet’s waiting room. Derek darted his eyes to the back room and then turned to the front door. Stiles caught the hint.

“Wanna give me a lift home? Scott’s tied up for another few hours."

Derek agreed readily and they left the vet’s clinic. “How are you really feeling?” Derek asked carefully, walking to his car.

“Okay, I guess. Tired, but strangely wired. Like when I used to double up on Adderall after pulling an all-nighter,” he shrugged and climbed into the passenger seat of Derek’s Camaro.

“Did you mean what you said?” Derek asked.

Stiles looked over to Derek. His eyes were forward as he started the car, shoulders tense and nostrils flaring a bit. “About what?”

“About…” Derek shifted his grip on the wheel, his knuckles white. “About working with the local pack. Helping with stray omegas?”

Stiles rested his head against the window, looking out at Beacon Hills as they pulled onto the main road. “Have you ever gotten so absorbed in something you lose track of time, like nothing else matters because what you’re working on is driving you to keep going until it’s done, until it’s perfect? Not because you have to, not because of some deadline, but because it’s what you love?”

“Stiles, I do taxes for a living.”

“No hobbies then? Nothing that you just… forget yourself in?”

Derek’s shoulders relaxed a hair and he sighed. “The full moon, we run. I always enjoyed it, but ever since I can do the full shift… it makes me feel so alive.”

Stiles smiled into the glass, keeping his eyes on the passing houses. “Lately, whenever I pick up a paint brush or a pencil, every time I lose myself into my art, all I end up drawing is you.” Stiles turned his head back to face Derek, resting the crown of his head in the curve of the seatbelt like a sling. “Not even magic related, like when I kept drawing Laura. Just… just you. You, your wolf, your red eyes, your tattoo. Just… you.”

Stiles watched as Derek gulped, his adam’s apple bobbing. “I don’t- I don’t want to just be an art project.”

“You’re not.” Stiles sat up properly in his seat and fidgeted with his shirt sleeves. “Look, Derek, I don’t… I don’t like people lightly. I don’t even remember the last time that I- just, fuck it. I like you. I like you a lot. A stupid amount. And I don’t know why, but you – _you_ have made me want to be a better person, as cheesy and as stupid as that sounds. And –”

Derek’s hand settled on Stiles’s knee and he clamped his mouth shut. “Stiles, calm down,” Derek said. Stiles glanced over to see a straining grin on Derek’s face. Derek’s thumb swept back and forth on Stiles’s knee. “I like you, too. A stupid amount.”

Stiles looked away, blushing. “Okay.”

“Just okay?”

“Okay, _good_.”

Derek laughed and squeezed Stiles’s knee. He didn’t move his hand as he drove the rest of the way to Stiels’s apartment.

“Do you, uh, do you want to come up?” Stiles asked, locking eyes with Derek.

Derek looked him over, a hunger in his eyes. Stiles started singing _Hungry Like a Wolf_ in his head before shaking it away and accrediting it to nerves.

“Yeah,” Derek smirked.

Stiles turned away and rolled his eyes as he stepped out of the car. “Stop looking so smug. You you’re just as dumb as I am.”

“Probably,” Derek laughed, following Stiles out of the car.    

Stiles felt jittery and awkward as they made their way up to his apartment. “This is dumb,” Stiles said, more to himself than Derek as he took out his keys. “Like, here we are, two adults, thrown together due to weird supernatural mishaps, and I’m most nervous about inviting you into my apartment, _where you’ve been before_.” He huffed, throwing his weight into the door to push it open after the key kind of caught. “Like, stupid, right? I have nothing to be nervous about here. I recently _controlled the wind_ and-”

The door shut behind Derek and suddenly Stiles found himself spun around, his back against the door. Stiles let out a little “umf” and then Derek was kissing him. His broad hands were framing Stiles’s face and Stiles’s lips responded on instinct even though it took his body a few moments to get in the game and grab onto the lapels of Derek’s leather jacket. It had been a while since Stiles had done this with anybody, being a semi recluse with a narrow social circle didn’t lead to many hookups or relationships. Still, it just felt _natural_ , the way his lips parted for Derek’s, the curl of his tongue, and nip of his teeth. Stiles moaned, pulling Derek closer before pushing him back to yank that stupid jacket off.

“Off, off,” Stiles muttered.

“Pushy,” Derek laughed into Stiles’s mouth while shucking his jacket.

“You owe me,” Stiles said while peppering kisses down Derek’s neck, “for canceling our date.”

“Well I plan to apologize for that to your satisfaction,” Derek growled playfully, pulling up the hem of Stiles’s shirt.

They broke apart just long enough for his tee to go flying before Derek was mouthing at Stiles’s collarbone. He threw his head back and Derek bucked his hips forward with a happy, almost animalistic sound. It took Stiles a moment with his lust idled brain to catch what he had done. He had bared his neck to an alpha werewolf. Stiles let out a little laugh, giddy with the insanity of it all, before coming to the conclusion that he didn’t really mind and maybe kind of even liked it.

The fever with which Derek had been kissing him slowed as Derek’s fingers trailed over the raised scars the littered Stiles’s torso. Their kiss slowed down, something just as strong if not stronger pulling them closer. Derek’s fingers skimmed his scars, tracing the bite mark on his right side and following the claw marks south. There were other scars that Derek found, his fingers making their way across his body. The thin line from the Darach’s blade that had cut just below his ribcage, the lightning-like scar on his right shoulder that came from the first time Stiles bottled up his magic too long, the speckling of little welts from glass shards thanks to the totally average car crash he had gotten into after first getting his license.

Stiles ran his hands over Derek’s skin, underneath his shirt, and wondered what kind of scars he might have had if wolves didn’t heal so quickly. Derek’s body didn’t carry any of the stories Stiles’s did. Still, he thought, Stiles was sure to learn them all.

They somehow made their way to the bed, Derek taking a moment to tug off his shirt before tackling Stiels’s pants. They fell onto the mattress while their jeans were still around their waists. Stiles pushed up, framing Derek’s body on his hands and knees. “You really got under my skin, you know,” Stiles said, searching Derek’s face for some kind of answer to a question he didn’t have.

“I’ve been crazy about you since you picked me up in the rain,” Derek admitted.

“This is something big, isn’t it?” Stiles asked lowering himself so that he could feel the up and down movement of Derek’s chest against his own.

“Yeah,” Derek breathed out, “I really think it is.”

Stiles grinned and kissed Derek again, slower, deeper, more of a promise than a kiss.

“Come on, let’s save the talk for later. Let’s get naked.”

Derek laughed the whole time he helped Stiles out of his pants.

 

 


	16. Chapter 16

“Good job, Stilinski,” Cora smirked, patting his shoulder with a bit too much ommpf, nearly knocking him over.

Stiles glared at Cora from his half crouched position, panting and covered in sweat. He was too tired to stand up fully at this point anyway. “I hate you,” he said through heavy breaths.

“No you don’t!” she cheered with that evil Hale girl grin. Stiles had become much too much familiar with it in the past few months between her, Laura, and Malia. “Here, drink some water and stretch it out.” Cora handed him a water bottle and gestured for him to sit on the grass. “Cool down and then you’re all done.”

“Oh, gee, thanks,” Stiles rolled his eyes but thankfully uncapping the water.

“So how’s that emissary training coming?” Cora asked conversationally as she talked Stiles through his cool down.

“I’ve been needing Skype calls with Lydia to have her tutor me in Latin,” Stiles said with a flat face.

“Oooh, ouch,” Cora laughed.

“It’s not like there’s an official test or anything. It’s not like becoming a lawyer. Yet I still have to be a lawyer. And a doctor, and a chemist, and a botanist, and a magician, and a historian. I have so much to catch up on it’s stupid. But Deaton says I’m not in a bad place.”

“You’ll get there. Just not before you marry Derek or I lose a bet to Malia.”

Stiles rolled his eyes, having stopped trying to figure out when any of the Hale girls were pulling his leg and accepting that the chances were they would have at least one bet going between them about his relationship with Derek. Laura had won the one about when they’d finally sleep together. Werewolf noses are way too intrusive for Stiles’s taste, but god at least he wasn’t related to the people who could smell when he had sex.

The door to the Hale house opened and Derek joined them. Derek seemed beyond frustrated at this point, Laura still inside with Isaac bickering over wall color. The place looked as good as new, and had been finished repairs over a month ago, but the finishing details were taking forever because everyone had an opinion. It was easier, Derek always said, when they were just moving into an old place with a lot of their family’s old furniture. Now it was “their place” and “a new pack” and “something special” and “personal touches” and Derek was getting migraines. He didn’t know that was even _possible_ for a werewolf.

“You ready?” Derek asked him as Stiles lay loose limed and exhausted from Cora’s training.

“As he’ll ever be,” Cora answered for him. “Come on, Stilinski. Up!”

“I’m the dog here,” Stiles grumbled as he rolled onto his side and pushed himself to sitting. “This is as far as I go,” he protested.

“Good enough,” Derek snorted. Derek knelt down beside Stiles and stripped off his shirt.

“Ugh, I am not staying here for this,” Cora bemoaned before stopping off inside.

“I am,” Stiles smirked, shamelessly looking over Derek’s torso.

“Focus,” Derek said, a soft smile gracing his lips. It was the personal kind, the way his eyes crinkled just a little and he always seemed like he was biting the inside of his cheek. It made Stiles absolutely melt.

“Right,” Stiles grinned before the reality of the situation sunk in and he tensed up again, all of Cora’s ‘physical meditation’ and the effect of Derek’s stupid smile slipping away. “Right,” he said again, his heartrate already doubling in anticipation.

“Calm down,” Derek said patiently, taking Stiles’s hand in his. “It’s just me. You know me.”

Stiles nodded. He did know Derek. He knew his smiles and his laughs and the sounds he makes when he’s being taken apart. Stiles knew Derek’s coffee order and snack preferences and the stupid brow crease he got when doing math. Stiles knew Derek’s favorite Disney movie (Mulan), and the names of all his family back in New York and down in Mexico, and Stiles had the tattoo on his back memorized, able to trace it without even looking. He knew Derek. This would be okay.

“I’m going to go slowly,” Derek said, brining Stiles’s hand up to Derek’s face, placing it against his stubble. “You ready?”

Stiles nodded, a little like a bobble head and unable to quite stop himself. “Yeah, yeah I’m ready.”

Between one breath and the next Derek started shifting. Derek’s eyes bled red. He turned his head to the side into Stiles’s hand, like he was getting a kink out of his neck, a purely Derek habit. Then Derek’s brow hardened, protruding in a way that made his eyebrows practically invisible. Hair grew thicker down his sideburns and his teeth elongated. Stiles’s heart was racing, but he was still breathing, he was still there, with Derek. Derek’s hand still held onto Stiles’s, giving it a little squeeze.

“This is good,” Stiles said a bit strained. “But okay. I’m done.”

Derek quickly shifted back. “No full shift today?”

“I mean,” Stiles gulped, “you did already take your shirt off.”

“Wanna try it?” Derek rubbed his thumb over the back of Stiles’s hand. “We don’t have to, but…”

Stiles looked in his eyes and nodded slowly. In moments, Derek was standing again and stripping off his pants.

“YEAH, TAKE IT OFF!” Isaac yelled from inside the house. Derek rolled his eyes completely done with his pack.

And then, in the blink of an eye, Stiles watched as his hot naked boyfriend stretched out his neck and lengthen his teeth and snapped his bones as they changed, eyes red and skin bursting with pitch black fur.

The moment in between felt like a bubble swelling inside Stiles chest. The haunting image of a specter from years past was clawing at the corners of his mind while Derek changed. Hunched over in a moment of pain, not quite human, not quite wolf. It felt like a rip in his chest.

And then there was a wet nose poking at his cheek and thick, soft fur nuzzling against his skin. Stiles’s still felt like his chest was going to explode but Derek was warm. The wolf crawled onto Stiles’s lap and Stiles felt himself slowly calm down.  

Stiles started laughing a little hysterically. “Oh, Jesus Christ, I am cuddling with a wolf.” Derek snorted into Stiles’s neck. Stiles began to pet Derek’s flank. “You’re beautiful, you know,” he whispered into the wolf’s neck. His heart was thundering, but he felt like it wasn’t a bad thing, like maybe, for once, he wasn’t afraid.

X

“This building is creepy, Derek,” Stiles complained as they entered the run down lobby. “Why are we here again?”

“I told you, I’ll tell you when we get there.”

“Oh my god, please tell me there’s a working elevator,” Stiles groaned when Derek headed to the stairs.

“It’s only four floors. That’s like a third of Cora’s Stairmaster workout.”

“But I already did that todaaaaaay,” Stiles whined.

“Stop being a baby.”

“Derrrreeeeeekk.”

Derek huffed and rolled his eyes and picked Stiles up in a fireman carry, completely ignoring his yelp.

“Hey!” Stiles yelled.

“Don’t you dare tell me to put you down, Stiles,” Derek said, “if you don’t want to climb the stairs, this is the only solution I can give you.”

“Ugh, fine!” Stiles groaned and then smacked Derek’s butt. “Giddyup cowboy.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

A few minutes later Stiles was back on his feet. Derek went over to what looked like the kind of metal door they had in mechanic shops or the back room of Ikea and slid it open.

“What do you think?”

Past the door was a fully furnished (if minimalistic) apartment. There were a giant set of windows on the far side and a spiral staircase leading to a lofted area and a bed just casually in the middle of the room and what looked like a hole in the brick work between the main room and another room.

“Did this used to be a factory building?”

“Yep,” Derek said.

“And you what, bought the whole thing?”

Derek just smiled. “I hired on the contractors Laura found to renovate the place. Obviously, they haven’t really started yet, but,” he shrugged.

“Why?” Stiles asked cautiously as he wandered around the open space.

“Because,” Derek shrugged, sliding the door shut behind them, “the house is great, but it’s really more for the pack, a ground base. And Isaac wants me to look at his friend Erica about giving her the bite. So, we may be expanding, and I’m the alpha, but I’ve always been a big personal space guy.”

“Uh-huh,” Stiles said, trying to put everything together. “So you’re going to live in this place instead?”

“Well I was thinking,” Derek shrugged again, the insecure gesture looking weird on him, “that, I know it’s still early, but I know your lease is coming up for renewal soon, and-”

“Are you asking me to move in with you?” Stiles asked, slack jawed. “Derek you have a hole in your wall,” he said gesturing to the brick work.

“I figured that could be your art room. It opens to the patio, good light, keep the smell of chemicals slightly contained.” Derek wasn’t looking at Stiles as he talked, out of fear or embarrassment, Stiles couldn’t tell.

“Oh my god,” Stiles exclaimed, flailing his arms a bit and throwing his head back in surrender to his own butterfly filled stomach. “You’re absolutely ridiculous. Come here.” Stiles raced over to Derek jumped up to lock his legs around the man’s waist. He planted a firm kiss on Derek’s lips, happy to know how instinctual it was for Derek to catch him. “Yes, I will move in with you.” Derek grinned as they tried to kiss again, it dissolving into a fit of laughter and smiles. “But maybe not until you get the elevators fixed. Because I am not here for that.”

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> So I completely ignored the whole Beserker thing because they honestly have no reason to be associated with the Aztec temple and werejaguar stuff going on in SSN4. So I just nixed it. But it's my own canon anyway, so whatever. I do what I want. :P
> 
> TThanks for reading.
> 
> [FIND ME ON TUMBLR](http://www.inthearmsofathief.tumblr.com)
> 
> Also! I'm made a webseries about werewolves! [The Werewolf Diaries](http://www.youtube.com/c/amyberserk)


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